Lapsus Memoriae
by RealityWarp
Summary: "You make no sense, lass. You look like an elf, talk like a man, eat like a hobbit, curse like a dwarf, and sleep like the dead." — Every Tolkien fan has a 'Tenth Walker' in them, I just never expected mine to become quite so literal. [A mix of the films and books. Full description inside.]
1. Description & Prologue

- Rávamë's Bane Trilogy -  
><strong>Book I : Lapsus Memoriae<strong>

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><p><strong>"lapsus memoriae"<strong>  
><em><strong>latin.<strong> a slip of the memory_

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><p><strong>Full Description:<strong> Every Tolkien fan has a "Tenth Walker" in them — but Eleanor Dace hasn't read a word of Tolkien since she was thirteen and was still fantasising about adventuring in other worlds.

Now she's twenty-two, a third year English Literature student about to graduate from college; when she discovers that her teenage fantasy just got a bit too realistic for her liking. Now she's trapped in Arda, a world she has little idea how to survive in, trying to recover a missing set of memories that might help get her home. Or they might just make things go from merely life-threateningly bad; to apocalyptically worse.

With little more than her hazy recall of the Lord of the Rings trilogy to draw on (and a sarcastic second personality giving cryptic advice in her head) Eleanor begins to realise that there is something sinister going on in Middle Earth, besides the return of the One Ring. Something more than mere coincidence brought her here, and only remembering what it is will get her home again.

Oh, and in case things weren't complicated enough already — her ears just got a whole lot more pointy.

**_[Follows a mix of canon from the books and films. Rated for language and somewhat graphic descriptions.]_**

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><p><strong>AN: **Yes, it's been done a billion times. Yes, I'm sure I'm going to be upsetting a small army of Tolkien purist just waiting to breathe fire at me for writing this — but here we are with my take on the ever popular cliche: "a girl falls into Middle Earth."

I've tried hard to make the plot and characters as believable as possible, and where possible I've held as true to the original canon (both book and film) as I can. If it's not your cup of tea, then feel free to just hit the back button. No one is stopping you. But if you're willing to come along for the ride, I hope you enjoy my writing and I'd love to hear what you think.

Long chapters. Slow to build up. No romance planned yet, though that may change depending on development/feedback. Reviewer are adored, constructive critique is welcome, and flames will be used to cook my dinner.

So without further ado, lets get this ball rolling!

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><p><strong><em>- Prologue -<em>**

_ - An except from the "Missing Persons" section of the local Newspaper, dated February 12th -_

Eleanor Lucy Dace, 22, was reported missing on Monday by her flatmates after she failed to return home from work to their shared apartment early Sunday morning.

Miss Dace, a third year English Literature student at Imperial University, was last seen leaving the Cat & Canary student bar (where she was employed as a bartender) at about 2:00am on Sunday. She was said by colleges and friends to have been "upset by something before she suddenly up and left."

The shoes Miss Dace was last seen wearing the night of her disappearance were later found in a rubbish bin on the high street, leading police to believe that she must have vanished somewhere on the path between the popular student hangout and the campus bus stop.

Miss Dace's family have been informed of her disappearance, though they have refused to give a statement as the investigation continues…


	2. Part I : Chapter 1

**24 / 01 /15 ~ In which Eleanor makes a not-so-flashy-exit.**

**Disclaimer:** "The Lord of the Rings" is the property of J.R.R. Tolkien. I only claim ownership over Eleanor Dace and the subsequent plot of her story.

**A/N: Fair warning: this fic takes has a bit of a long intro and buildup all through Part I - Part II will kick off at Chapter 7 when things start moving a little faster. Hope you enjoy!**

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><p><em><strong>Part I : Chapter <strong>__**1**_

- February 10th -

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><p>I hated him.<p>

I hated him. That was all I could think. My hand clenched into a fist around my mobile, which was still pressed to my ear. I could feel my arm shaking as the muscles constricted in rage. I was biting down so hard on my lower lip, I was almost on the verge of drawing blood with my teeth.

"Ellie?" Katie asked nervously from the other side of the bar. "Are you alright?"

It took several deep calming breaths before I felt like my voice was steady enough to speak.

_'Come on Eleanor. In through the nose, out through the mouth…'_

"I'm fine. Just a wrong number." I lied through gritted teeth, carefully moving my hand away from my ear. Katie gave me a disbelieving look as she eyed the fist that was still on the verge of crushing my phone into powder. I forced my smile back onto my face, finally managing to pry my fingers off my mobile and shove it a little brutally into my back pocket of my jeans. "My shift is almost done. Let me get us a drink and we can go find the others."

Before Katie could object I turned to face the liquor shelves and retrieved two tall glasses. I kept my back to her and the rest of the drinking students while I worked, hoping that no one else would notice my eyes starting to fill with tears.

Katie okay-ed me half heartedly, before getting caught up in conversation with a guy waiting next to her. Red-headed, curvy and exotically pretty, my best friend had been earning herself a lot of smouldering looks all evening, especially in the tight black and green dress. She had offered to do me up for our girls-night-out too, but I'd only let her curl my normally pin straight brown hair. I had already settled comfortably on a blue halter top, tight black jeans and a pair of heels. I had to admit, I'd felt good enough to walk with a kick in my step at the beginning of my shift at the student bar.

Now I just felt like being sick.

"I'll just be a minute." I said, blinking back the unshed tears, and sliding our drinks across the bar towards Katie and her guy friend.

I hastily bid my manager and fellow booze-dealers a goodnight, untying and slinging my apron over the back of a barstool. I must have failed to conceal the furious look on my face, because I barely had to shove my way through the crowd of semi-drunk students before I found Katie near the dance floor. She'd abandoned her admirer and had come over to find me. She looked unsure of what to say and I sighed heavily, trying to relax.

"Sorry Kit-Kat, I just heard something that upset me a bit." I said, using the nickname I'd been calling her since we were ten, although it was a slight understatement. I wasn't upset. I was murderous. I felt like I wanted to strangle someone to death, and then kick over a building for good measure.

The look on Katie's face said that she wasn't buying it.

"He's giving you problems again, isn't he?" She didn't bother to make it into a question.

I nodded reluctantly, taking a large gulp of my drink. I almost choked on the lump in my throat which I hadn't even noticed was there.

"Something like that."

"I thought you two were finally over this."

"So did I…" I mumbled, feeling something buzzing against my hip.

My phone.

My stomach plummeted for the second time that night and I quickly downed the rest of my glass in one go. The alcohol burned the back of my throat and I forced another false smile at Katie. God knows after all the crap she helped me through recently; she deserved to have at least one night without me dragging her into another of my dramas.

"I'm going to sit outside for a bit. I need to cool off. Why don't I find you and the others on the dance floor in a few minutes?"

Katie looked doubtfully at me, almost as if she could see straight through me. Five years together at school and then three of college; she'd been my best friend for so many years she was more like a sister. She knew me well enough to know when I needed to be alone.

"You sure you'll be ok, hun? Its cold out tonight." She asked with a worried look.

"Yeah, I'll be fine. I've got a coat." I answered her without hesitating. She nodded, giving me a reassuring little smile and a gentle squeeze on the shoulder. Then she turned and moved back through the thick crowds to where excessively loud 5club music was blaring from the speakers. I waited until she was out of sight before letting the false smile slide off my face.

It was snowing again when I stepped outside, just past the bouncers who where chatting leisurely by the doors. It would have been a beautiful evening, with the late winter snow still falling, but I was far too focused on the dread rising in my stomach to think about it.

I pulled my mobile out of my coat pocket and looking at the screen.

_~1 Missed Call_

_Caller ID: Mark~_

I stabbed the redial button with my thumb and held it to my ear, trying not to shiver.

It rang once. Twice. Three times. Finally he picked up.

"Hey babes, I was just thinking about you," Mark greeted me cheerfully as if nothing was wrong, "I've been trying to call you all night. I really wanted to talk about when you're coming back to—"

"I picked up the first time you rang me." I interrupted him, unable to mask my anger any longer, "About two minutes ago. While you were rolling around in bed with that 'new friend' you were telling me about."

There was a very potent silence on the other end of the line. Obviously Mark hadn't realised that just as he and his new 'friend' had been getting down to business, he'd accidentally hit the redial button on his phone and called me. I'd got to hear the entire thing from start to finish.

"Still want to talk?" I asked, and it came out in a growl.

"Ells, that was nothing." He started after a pause, but I could hear the panic in his tone, "We were tickling each other, thats all. We were just joking around, it's not what you—"

"Do you normally moan the names of people you tickle?" I asked, cutting him off again, "Or are you that enthusiastic about everyone you take to your bedroom to tickle at two in the morning?"

"Ells, you're not listening to me! I would never do that to you!" He lied again, and it felt like an icicle being pushed through my gut, "You've been drinking. You're tired. It isn't what you think."

I should have just hung up there and then. But I just couldn't stop.

"I just got off work, Mark. I'm still sober, and I heard everything. 'Annabella' is a bit of a mouth full of a name to shout at orgasm, don't you think?"

It was only when I heard the faint snorts of laughter from behind her that I realised that the bouncers were eavesdropping on the conversation. I didn't care. I could feel myself boiling over with silent anger. It wasn't until I felt something warm roll down my cheek that realised I was crying.

"Ells it didn't happen like that!"

"I don't care _how_ it happened, Mark." I said quietly and without emotion, "I have class in the morning and I'm tired. Just tell me the truth, or I'm hanging up right now."

I could almost hear his temper snapping through the phone. "Fine!" He spat angrily, "I did it! I slept with her! Happy now?!"

It was stupid and pathetic, but I covered my mouth to hide the sob that crawled up my throat. I clubbed it down with the blunt side of my anger, refusing to let him hear me crying.

"All this crap only happened because you went away to a college on the other side of the fucking country, and you were too selfish to ever come back and visit." He continued to vent furiously at me. I forced the lump in my throat down before responding: better to sound pissed off than weepy.

"So this is my fault now?!" I forced my voice to stay steady as another wave of tears rolled silently down my cheeks, taking my make up with it, "You swore you were willing to wait when I left! We agreed that we'd talk if things got difficult! You swore you'd never do this!"

I heard him scoff, and it made me want to hit something.

"I agreed to wait if you promised to come back! But you were too much of a coward to even call!" I could almost hear the sneer in his tone, "I've had enough of waiting."

I felt my insides constrict at that sentence. My boiling rage turned to ice in my blood, and I could all but feel my heart turning to stone in my chest. For several painfully long seconds I could barely breathe. When I finally did answer him, it was in a voice so cold, so quiet and furious, that it startled me. "I guess that's it then. We're done."

My whole body was shaking with fury. The line crackled and I could hear a woman's voice on the other end asking if my dear old ex was ok. My blood crystallised into shards of ice as I listened to him softly reassuring her that everything was fine.

Finally he spoke to me, one last time.

"You know you'll never find anyone who will love you more than I did, Ells. Ever."

I gave a chilly little smile, and only wished he could have seen it.

"That's good. I don't particularly want to be loved the way you 'loved' me again any time soon." I said coldly, pouring as much of my frozen anger, rage and hurt as I could get into the last words I'd ever say to him.

Anger tore through me, and the next thing I knew I was hurling my flimsy mobile phone like a cricket ball at the stone wall a few meters away. It shattered like a miniature firework, sending bits of circuiting and plastic flying into the snow. Later I would remember thinking that was probably a stupid thing to do. I'd need to buy myself and cheap replacement.

The bouncers gave a loud chorus of cheers and whoops of approval behind me. I had been friendly with most of the staff on the campus since I'd started working part time at the student bar. I knew they only meant it to cheer me up, but I wasn't it any mood to go back inside and pretend I was ok anymore.

I was tired, cold, angry, and just wanted to go home.

I forced a small smile at them, asked them to tell Katie I'd decided to head home after all, and started walking back across the courtyard. I managed to keep myself from breaking down into angry tears again for most of the walk across campus towards the bus stop. It was early in the morning, cold, dark, and the high street was virtually deserted when I finally reached it, still lost in bitter thoughts.

I'd suspected for a long time that my turbulent long-distance-relationship with Mark — the beau of my final years at senior school — would end up like this. He'd been sweet and supportive at first when I'd been accepted to go to university in London, but it had quickly become obvious that he hadn't wanted me to go. I'd been putting off coming back to see him for months just to avoid him trying to talk me into dropping out early.

_"What are you going to do with an English Literature degree anyway?" _He'd said.

I sighed and wished that I hadn't been so stupid as to throw my phone against a wall. I desperately wanted to call home and talk to my folks.

I wanted to talk things out with my mum; get long-winded anecdotal advice from my dad; get a sarky but well meant jibe about 'scummy cheating boyfriends' from my little brother. But even if I did have my phone, chances were that my family would have all been asleep anyway. That's the way things worked when you had family who were constantly travelling around the world.

Mid thought, my foot suddenly slipped on the frozen pavement and my ankle twisted painfully in the wrong direction. I half cursed, half sobbed, and angrily yanked the once beautiful shoes from my feet. The heels had been worn down past the point of repair and they were caked in a thick layer of ice and mud.

Furious and tired, I dumped them into a nearby rubbish bin, ignoring the freezing pain of my bare feet on the icy pavement.

The bus stop finally came into view at the end of the road, but as I made my way towards it I ended up glancing at my reflection in a darkened shop window. It was only for a second, but I mentally winced at what I saw.

My make up had almost been washed off by my waterworks. What hadn't come off completely had run down my puffy red cheeks in a series of horrible long black streaks. The snow that had landed on my curled brown hair had melted, making is go lank and tangled, and my normally bright green eyes were watery, sore and bloodshot to hell. I looked like something that had died at the bottom of a well.

I sighed heavily, no energy left to cry or get angry, or anything. I just stared at myself in the glass, thinking about how things had been getting harder and harder to deal the closer I got to graduation. I'd put it all down to stress — over working myself with my studies, my work at the bar, my extra curricular activities, and trying to keep Mark happy.

I'd never looked or felt so run down in all my life.

I was just so tired. All I really wanted now was to go home, crawl into bed and not wake up for a very, very long time. Or maybe just disappear altogether.

_'Disappear… really?'_

The thought rang through my head as I stared at my sorry reflection in the window. It rang in my mind as if someone had actually asked me the question aloud. Melodramatic and stupid as it was, I already knew my answer.

"Yeah," I mumbled almost silently, my voice going weirdly muffled and slurred, "That would be nice."

That was the last thing I remember.

~ / ~ / ~ / ~

I was dreaming. I knew that before anything else.

My hands brushed the tops of the tall yellow flowers that bloomed under a navy coloured night sky. The moon drifted through the sky like a floating lantern, and the air was warm and comforting rather than cold and harsh, and it was quiet. For once in so long, it was peaceful and safe for me to walk through my own dreamscape.

The grass tickling the soles of my bare feet as I walked. I could smell the scent of the flowers as they swayed sleepily in the gentle breeze. The skies were so clear I could even count the thousands of stars as they danced behind the thin wisps of cloud.

I guess I'd finally reached my limit. Maybe I was so tired that I didn't even have the energy to care about what was going on outside my dream world. I could have happily kept walking on forever in the peaceful state, oblivious to the world outside.

I probably would have if something out of place hadn't caught my eye.

I stopped and stared off through the warm evening air across the yellow heads bobbing in the breeze. I couldn't see their face, but I was sure it was a person. They were knelt down among the flowers, a curtain of long brown hair shielding them from my eyes. I couldn't see what they where doing, or even who they were, but I found myself walking towards them.

A sudden hesitation in their movement and a twitch of their head said that they had apparently sensed me there. I opened my mouth to speak, not a sound came out. Then the ground vanished from under my feet.

My clothes flew up around my body as I dropped through a flurry of yellow petals into inky blackness.

I didn't even have the chance to scream before I was awake again.

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><p><strong>AN: Kind of an cliche way to start, I know, but stick with me if you can. I have much more than angsty romantic dramas in store for Ms. Dace. See you next chapter. :)**


	3. Part I : Chapter 2

**24 / 01 /15 ~ In which Eleanor gets a crash course in survival ****(emphasis on 'crash'.)**

**Disclaimer:** "The Lord of the Rings" is the property of J.R.R. Tolkien. I only claim ownership over Eleanor Dace and the subsequent plot of her story.

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><p><em><strong>Part I : Chapter <strong>__**2**_

- Down The Rabbit Hole -

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><p>The last time I'd had a dream that vivid, I'd ended up sleepwalking and been found facedown on the front lawn the next morning by my brother.<p>

It had been years ago, not since I'd been twelve years old. But recently my sleep had become more and more restless — the substance of my dreams containing far less fluffy bunnies and a lot more Weeping Angels from Dr. Who. A metaphor for all the stresses that come with being a final year degree student a psychologist might say, if I ever cared to ask for one's opinion.

My breath hitched and my heart beat surged painfully as I pulled myself out of the dream turned nightmare. I gasped and coughed through the sudden throbbing ache in my chest. My eyelids felt like they'd been glued together. My mouth was dry and I felt strangely dizzy, a little like the time I'd been persuaded to drink too much rum at a party during my first year.

Funny, I couldn't remember drinking enough to get a hangover. Actually… I couldn't seem to remember much of anything…

I searched my head, trying to recall the memories of arriving home, but they wouldn't come. I could remember leaving the student bar, and walking towards the bus stop, staring at myself in a shop window…

Then nothing.

Did I make it home? Did I even reach the bus stop? A worryingly large chunk of my memory was just gone. The more I struggled to retrieve it, the more it seemed to slide away. Had my drink been spiked? No, I didn't think so, or it would have kicked in sooner. Maybe I slipped and hit my head? A concussion would certainly account for the splitting headache I had.

With an irritated groan, I decided it didn't matter. I rolled over and tried to feel around the nightstand for my phone.

At least, I_ tired_ to roll over. I only got about half way before a sharp pulling sensation on my left arm and leg stopped me. Baffled, I peeled open my sticky eyes and craned my neck to look down at myself. It was almost too dark to see at all, but there was just enough dim light to see that whatever I was lying on was definitely not my bed. It felt hard and uncomfortable, but not nearly as uncomfortably as the tree roots that were pinning my other arm and both my legs to the floor.

Hang on… _tree root__s__?_

I was supposed to be in my bed at home, not lying on a stone floor in the dark covered in tree roots. I forced myself to breathe. Dream or not, at the very least I wanted the option of moving my limbs.

"Ok. You can worry about the 'why' and 'how' later. Get your arms and legs free first, Eleanor."

I sat up a little more carefully. My eyes had adjusted enough to see the roots that were keeping me pinned. Two were coiled tightly around my left arm while three were bound even more tightly around my lower legs. At first it looked as if someone had tied them to me, but the more I struggled to free myself, the more I saw that they'd must have _grown_ around me while I'd been asleep. Not that that was possible.

My hand were shaking as I worked to pull the stems away. By the time I managed to get the last roots off, my fingers were bruised and sore. When my legs were finally free too I had to keep from jumping to my feet as the rest of my environment finally began to sink in.

I was in a cave. A cave. And I wasn't dreaming. The continuous pain in my head, chest and hands was making that obvious.

It was so damn dark, but my eyes had adjusted just enough to see the tunnel wall. I began to follow it towards what I hoped was the exit, trying to stay calm. I couldn't help but feel a rush of relief when I finally saw sunlight streaming in from just around the next corner. I ran for it.

I ran so fast it shocked me, only slowing when my foot caught on a stray root or stone that seemed to exist only to trip me. Finally, I burst from the mouth of the cave like a mad woman, gasping for fresh air as if I'd been held too long under water.

I probably would have just kept running out of blind panic if my senses hadn't been viciously assaulted by the world outside. The light and colours were all so bright it felt like someone had made me look into the sun through a telescope. My pounding head was suddenly filled with the sounds of streams and birdsong, so loud and clear it was as if someone had turned up the volume on the entire world.

It was all too loud and too bright. And it hurt. God it _hurt_.

Only one thing I managed to register before the pain became too much and I screamed, falling to my knees on the rocky outcrop with my hands clamped over my ears and my eyes clenched shut.

I wasn't in London anymore.

Everything after that was a blur. A painful, colourful blur.

Whether though fear, confusion or adrenaline fuelled survival instinct, I had very little recollection of the days that followed. What little I did remember consisted of working out that I'd ended up somewhere between a small range of rocky hills, and a wood that stretched further than I could see.

I remembered discovering that I was no longer clothed in my black and blue halter and jeans, but something much older, worn out and dirtier than I could remember ever owning. It looked like the remains of a long red dress, but I couldn't be sure since it had been hacked off just below the knee. I also remembered the sunlight hurting my eyes so much that I only dared venture out into the world when my thirst and hunger pangs finally got too strong. The world seemed so much bigger and more daunting around me that I could ever remember it being, like I was seeing it all for the first time.

The next two days melted together into a mesh of scavenging what little food I trusted my shaky survival knowledge with, and following the flow of the river downstream. Fishing really wasn't really an option, but luckily there were several abundant fruit trees and berry bushes growing along the forest's edge. It wasn't enough to keep the hunger at bay for long, but at least it kept me sustained enough to just keep walking. It was pretty soon after my second day of this that I realised that, despite my hunger, I was not tiring the way I'd expected to. My body seemed determined to not grow weary, even after walking for miles in bare feet without stopping.

_'__It__'__s just the adrenaline,__'_ I told myself a hundred times. _'__You__'__re frightened and confused, it__'__s sharpened your senses and boosted your endurance. That__'__s all__…'_

None of this however was enough to distract me from the constant fear of my unfamiliar surroundings. I was still scared out of my mind. The only distraction I found was to just keep moving, only stopping occasionally to eat, drink or wash myself as best she could in the freezing cold river. By the second morning, I was ravenous with hunger and still hopelessly lost. I'd hoped that by following the river I'd at least have come across a village or town. It was only on the night of my third day of wandering that I finally spotted the lights glinting through the trees.

The relief and excitement had been like a shot of warm brandy. I rushed through the trees as quickly as I could, almost falling over myself in my haste to get to them.

In hindsight, it was a stupid thing for me to move as silently as I did. I should have called out for help, or at least announced my presence — but by then the fear and hunger had beaten my better judgement into submission.

I crept into the clearing without so much as a whisper.

A rather haggard and old-school looking tent was set up in a small clearing, with a single flickering lantern hanging from it's supports. A small supply pack and a few cloth sacks lay in a pile next to the tent, but I completely ignored all that in favour of what they were centerer around. In the middle of the camp was as old log lying close to a dying fire, the embers still glowing faintly. Hanging over the coals was a small cooking pot, and from what I could smell coming from inside, someone had left out the remains of their dinner before turning in for the night.

I felt my stomach growl painfully at the smell. I couldn't remember the last time I'd smelled anything so wonderful.

A small nagging part of my mind repeated that this was a stupid idea, but I ignored it. It had been days since I'd eaten anything more substantial than a handful of berries, and I was close to going mad with hunger.

Slowly, quietly as I could manage, I crept into the clearing and over to the fire, being carful not to stand on any of the fallen leaves or sticks. Just as I thought, when I peered inside the pot what looked and smelled like a freshly prepared stew was still simmering in its base. I couldn't tell what kind of meat it was, but it smelled so damn good that I honestly didn't care.

I was just reaching for the ladle when my persistent inner voice kicked in again. Something about this felt wrong, but I couldn't think clearly enough to understand why…

My hand had frozen in mid air as my eyes fixed on the lantern hanging from the tent support. Something whirred and clicked into place inside my exhausted mind. If its owner was already asleep in their tent, then…

Why was the lantern still lit?

Too late I realised my mistake. Before I could jump to my feet and make a dash for the trees, something cold and sharp pressed into the space between my shoulder blades, right behind my heart.

"Don't move." A deadly calm masculine voice growled from directly behind me.

~ / ~ / ~ / ~

Every nerve ending in my body felt like it had been jabbed with a taser. I went rigid, my hand still outstretched reaching for the stew pot.

"Stand up, slowly." The voice commanded from behind me.

Under any other circumstances, I would have not hesitated to ignore the command and make a mad dash back into the safety of the trees. But whatever it was that was being pressed against my spine felt like a _very _good reason to swallow my panic and cooperate.

I obeyed, standing up as slowly as I could without turning, and raising both hands either side to show I was unarmed.

"Who are you?" The male voice demanded in a voice that sounded closer to a growl than speech.

"I-I'm lost." I babbled before I could think about what was coming out of my mouth.

"I asked who you are, not what condition you are in." The man retorted without sympathy, although he seemed to pause upon hearing that my voice was female, "Your name, girl."

I swallowed. Half of my mind was screaming at me to run, but the other half was too paralysed with fear of what I guessed was a blade being driven into my back. I couldn't remember the last time I'd been so petrified. So it was a slight shock to me when my brain decided it was a good idea to say; "Why would I give you my name when I cannot even _see_ who you are?"

I mentally kicked myself. Brilliant Eleanor. Perfect opportunity to show off your rapier wit, when there is a frigging knife in your back.

To my surprise though, the stinging pressure in between my shoulder blades was suddenly relieved.

"Turn around." The growling voice instructed sharply.

It would have been a lie to say that I handled the situation bravely. I was so frightened that I had to consciously force my legs to move. Slowly, I turned on the spot, keeping both my trembling hands raised to just below my shoulders.

The man that stood before me was both terrifying and surprising all in the same glance. He was very tall, well over six feet, with a slightly overgrown mane of dark brown hair and stubble bordering on a beard to match. He was dressed in what she could only be describe as a shabby mediaeval war re-enactor's get-up; complete with dark, rough fabrics and a heavy looking leather belt loaded with small weapons. He also had a small star shaped pin that was holding his drab coloured cloak closed at the neck. He was dressed for resisting the elements, but even then I could tell by the way he held himself that he was not only strong, but fast too.

Hard core cosplay mugger or not though, if I had ever claimed to have seen a man that looked truly hardened by the harshness of the world, it was him.

He was glaring down at me with the starkest pair of grey eyes I'd ever seen on a human being, and it was enough to make my legs shake. Also, and much to my horror, the sharp object I had felt being pointed at my back only second before turned out not to be a knife, but an actual full sized sword.

Oh, and it was pointed straight at my chest.

"I will not ask a third time, girl." His voice was ten times more intimidating with the face to go with it, "Tell me who you are."

I opened my mouth to answer, but all I could focus on was the sword being aimed directly at me. The tip was less than an inch away from cutting into the skin under my collarbone.

It all happened in less than five seconds.

Without realising what I was doing, I took a step back, completely forgetting my close proximity to the camp fire. My heel caught on the stone sitting around the embers, and I began to stumble backwards. My arms pinwheeled, frantically trying and regain my balance, but the momentum sent me tumbling backwards. My elbow smacked into the makeshift stove, sending the cooking pot flying as I crashed to the ground.

Then I screamed.

I screamed as I felt my arm and hand fall directly into the still glowing embers. The sleeve of my dress offered no protection against the hot coals, and before I could react fast enough to pull my hand away I felt and smelled my skin scolding.

Quick as lightning, the terrifying man lunged forward and grabbed my arm, yanking it none too gently from the dying fire. He swatted with his gloved hand at my sleeve, hastily putting out the flames that had caught on my dress. When he did not relinquish his grip on my burned arm, I started thrashing and kicking against him in blinding agony, shrieking even louder than before.

"Be still! You'll injure yourself more!" I remember him yelling at me, trying to hold me down without touching my burned arm.

In hindsight, I couldn't really remember why I fought against him so hard. Maybe it was the pain, or maybe I was still running on bare instincts. A small part of my rational mind realised that whoever this utterly frightening man was, he was trying to help me. But as far as the rest of my mind was concerned, he was being about as helpful as a rampaging elephant in a ceramics factory.

The pain was too much. The fear was too much. The confusion was too much. _Everything_ was just too much. And he wouldn't stop shouting at me to stop moving. So I did the only rational thing I could think of…

I drew my fist back, and punched him as hard as I could across the face.

I watched as his head jerked to the left, and a small spattering of blood erupted from his mouth. Time slowed down as the edges of my vision began to go fuzzy and dark. He slowly turned a faintly stunned looking face back to look down at me, and I saw with a small pang on guilt that I'd split his lip. There was blood dibbling down his chin through his beard and onto his shirt.

Had I the breath in my lungs to speak I might have instinctively blurted an apology, but the tunnel vision chose that moment to take hold, and I'd sagged back on the grass into darkness.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Take a wild guess who she just socked in the face, or wait till the next chapter to find out. :)**


	4. Part I : Chapter 3

**24 / 01 /15 ~ In which Eleanor gets an unhelpful second personality.**

**Disclaimer:** _"The Lord of the Rings" is the property of J.R.R. Tolkien. I only claim ownership over Eleanor Dace and the subsequent plot of her story._

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><p><em><strong>Part I : <strong>__**Chapter **__**3**_

- Me, Myself, & A Ranger** -**

* * *

><p><em>"<em>_Well, you certainly handled that well.__"_

I didn't bother to open my eyes. I already knew I was dreaming again. I was far too painless to still be awake.

"Since when do figments of my subconscious know how to use sarcasm?" I groaned, not moving from where I lay flat on my back on what felt like soft grass.

_"__Since __**you**__ do, obviously.__" _The voice replied with a little dash of a smile, as if it was the silliest question in the world.

"I don't suppose you're here to tell me how the hell I managed to get from the college campus to the middle of a nightmare forest, are you?"

_"__Well being, in your words; __'__a figment of your subconscious__'__,__ I __**can**__**'**__**t**__ know anything that you don__'__t. So no, I__'__m afraid I can__'__t tell you that.__"_

I groaned again and rubbed my hands over my still closed eyes, "Wonderful, then this conversation is already pretty damn pointless then."

_"__That__'__s rather rude. At least you have someone to talk to now. Haven__'__t you been wishing for days__ now__?__"_

"A sarcastic and unhelpful second personality isn't exactly what I had in mind." I snapped, "Maybe I've finally started going crazy."

_ "__Lets hope not, that would be bad for the both of us.__" _The voice hesitated for a moment as if she was thinking, and I could almost feel her eyes on me. _"__Are you going to just lie there for eternity? Or are you going to get up and do something?__"_

"Like what?"

_"__Wake up?__" __S_he suggested, _"__Or you could keep talking to me. We could ponder your intriguing nature of your predicament together.__"_

"No thanks."

_"__Why not?__"_

"Because so far you haven't said anything remotely helpful." I said snippily.

_"__Well, maybe you just haven__'__t asked the right question.__"_

I paused for a moment to contemplate this.

"There's no point in me talking to you. You're not real. You're just a trauma induced invention of my subconscious, at best. You can't help."

_"__Even so, you don__'__t have to be so harsh about it. I was just making a polite suggestion.__"_

"And I can't remember asking for your opinion," I replied sharply, and then added tiredly, "Whoever the hell you are."

There was a ghostly chuckle and the sound of rustling on the grass next to me,_"__Well, why don__'__t you just open your eyes and find out?__"_

I sighed. I didn't really care about who I was talking to really. I knew I was just dreaming, and in theory I could just wake myself up in an instant, if I wanted to. But either way, that would still require opening my eyes. So, reluctantly I allowed my eyelids to slowly open…

And I found myself staring directly into my own face.

My figment — or whatever she really was — had the exact same oval face, with the exact same full mouth, narrow chin, small nose, and wide almond shaped eyes as me. Her hair was admittedly longer and better kept, tumbling all the way down to her waist, but it was exactly the same shade of chestnut brown as mine. If I had been standing, I was be willing to bet my life that the two of us were within a centimetre's difference in height.

It was like staring into a mirror, only my reflection had come to life right in front of me. The only part of her appearance that was in any way different from mine were her eyes. Where I knew mine were bright jade green, hers were an almost luminous shade of amber.

I stared at her with my jaw hanging slack, and my other self just smiled fondly from where she was knelt down next to me. We even had the same tiny dimple in our left cheek when we smiled.

_"__There we go, that__'__s much better.__"_

And then the world fell out from underneath me again.

~ / ~ / ~ / ~

Pain was the first and only thing that registered in my mind as I felt myself coming back into reality. My legs, my stomach, my head, my arm. Especially my arm. My whole body just _hurt._ I didn't dare try and move. Just _thinking_ about moving made me feel sick.

I realised after a moment's groaning that I was lying on my back, which was a start. There was something rough and scratchy supporting my head. I tried shifting just enough to feel all the muscles in my body complain for the small effort. Something heavy had been draped over my body, and despite the constant aches and hunger pangs, I felt shockingly healthy for someone who had their arm cooked medium-rare. My neck burned with pain as I forced myself to turn my head and crack my eyelids open. Early morning sunlight flooded my vision and illuminated the world around me.

I was still in the clearing where the camp had been set up. The shabby old tent had been taken down and the fire rekindled. Instead of a stew pot, there were now four small fish on sticks resting over the flames. I was lying close enough to the embers to feel the warmth on my skin, and smell the meat cooking. My stomach moaned in desperation, but the second I tried to get up off the ground a sharp and intense pain shot up my left arm. A throaty cry escaped me, and I curled into a ball on my side.

My burned hand and forearm had been placed by my side, supported on a separate piece of heavy but clean cloth. My sleeve was completely gone, ripped off at the elbow, and the skin looked clean around where several large flat leaves were covering the worst of the burns. I could feel something damp and cool covering the welts in a thick layer under the makeshift plasters. Although still tender and fresh, the burns didn't hurt half as much as I had been expecting them to. I'd been half prepared to wake up screaming in agony. Whatever had been applied to my skin under the leaves was obviously doing something to lessen the pain, and I felt a pang of gratefulness to whomever had attempted to patch me up.

But the gratitude died quickly when I remembered that the only person I'd seen in days had been the man with the scary eyes and the sword. The same man who had very nearly tried to kill me yesterday.

Left over fear from the previous night brought on another wave of nausea, and I tried to sit up again, using my unharmed arm as a clumsy lever. If it hadn't been for my bizarre new talent for hearing things that were a ridiculous distance away, I wouldn't noticed through the haze of pain as the said man trudged back into the clearing through the surrounding trees.

Our gazes met, and panic instantly flooded my senses again. Before I could think of what to do, I was scrambling backwards away from him on my one good hand and butt. The man instantly stopped his approach, obviously seeing the fear that must have been apparent on my face. He raised both of his hands in a universal gesture of peace.

"_Av __'__osto, hiril vuin.__*_" he said, and pointed to the bundles and pack that were lying where the tent had been the night before. Hesitantly, I ceased my back-pedalling and glanced over at the pile. The man's sword had been unbuckled from his belt, safely sheathed and was leaning innocently against a small tree a good few feet away. The intended message was obvious: he didn't mean me any harm.

Relief washed over me, but it was followed seconds later by confusion. I had been so dazed with panic moments ago that I had only just realised that when the man had spoken to me, it had been in a different language.

Weird, he was speaking perfect English yesterday…

I looked back to find him slowly moving towards me again, slower this time. I felt silly for being so jumpy, but my whole body froze like a spooked rabbit in headlights. He stopped again, a kinder expression in his eyes that before. Not that it helped. He was still scary as hell even without the sword.

"_Man i eneth l__í__n?__**_" He said, and I realised that he was asking me a question. One that I couldn't answer, seeing as I didn't even have the fainted idea what language he was speaking in.

"I-I..." I cringed at the frail croak of my voice and irritably cleared my throat to strengthen it, "I'm sorry, but I don't know what you're saying."

The man looked at me in confusion, his eyebrows pinched together. His hands dropped to his side again and for a second I was truly scared he was going to reach for his sword.

"_A nin __ú__-cheniathol?__***_" He spoke in that strange tongue again, but then seemed to rethink his words. He still wore a look of confusion, but it was now mixed with suspicion at me, "How is it that a she-elf does not know the language of her own people?"

_'__A she-elf?__'_

I was genuinely torn between bursting into tears and bursting out laughing. Had he really just said that? Had I really got myself lost in the woods, and then miraculously stumbled into an outdoor convention for fantasy nuts? Well, what other explanation could there possibly be?

My half amused, half petrified inner monologue must have shown on my face because he glared down at me with impatience when I didn't respond. I half giggled, half hiccuped in alarm and spluttered out an answer.

"Because I'm not a she-elf."

The man continued to stare down at me with narrowed disbelieving eyes.

"No? Then pray tell, my lady, what are you? Because you are certainly no man, nor a halfling." He said in a disbelieving, almost mocking tone and I was humiliated to feel my eyes being to swim a little.

"I'm human, of course." I said blankly.

He raised an eye brow at me, "Human?"

That was when the last shred of my self control withered and died.

"Yes! I'm a God damned _human_!" I burst out in a sudden frustrated shriek, my fear and desperation turning itself into rage. I'd had more than enough of this. If this all turned out to be some kind of game or lame joke, I was going to be putting someone's head through a wall when it was over.

"I'm not a man, elf, halfing, or whatever the hell else there is to be around here!" I screamed furiously at him, throwing my hands into the air, "I'm lost! I've been lost for two sodding days! I'm exhausted! I'm starving! And I'm—_**ah!**_"

I had been so caught up in my fury and confusion at the man, my situation, everything, that I hadn't realised that some of the leaves covering my burned arm had come off. Just a brush of the back of my hand on the fabric of my clothes was enough to cut my angry rant short. I gasped in pain, my whole body shaking as I cradled my wounded arm against me. Tears welled up behind my eyes, although I wasn't sure whether they were ones of pain or frustration anymore. I could feel them as they spilled down my cheeks, cutting little channels through the dirt on my face.

It took less than a second and no more than three strides for the man to move across the camp and kneel beside me, gently taking hold of my arm above the burns and turning it over. I instinctively resisted at first, but quickly ceased my struggling when he began quickly applying a thick clear balm over my hand. The pain instantly began to subside.

"Forgive me, I did not intend to upset you." His voice had gone from harsh and intimidating to what passed as gentle in mere seconds. Despite the pain, I couldn't help but find it a bit irritating, "Its best if you try not to move too much. You arm was badly burned yesterday."

He didn't bother to ask for my permission before treating the rest of my arm. Quick and skilful as any stone age first-aider could be, he removed the old leaves from my skin and began re-covering the burns with the strange tingling gel. Still feeling a little disarmed by his sudden kindness, and more than a little awkward that I'd yelled at him, I sat still and let him work. I could see that the skin on the back of my forearm and hand had blistered and become red and inflamed overnight, but I only winced when he pressed a new set of leaves over the burns.

"One question at a time." He said gently, taking the cloth that my arm had been lying on and tearing it into long strips, "First, what is your name?"

I looked at him wearily for a second.

Benevolent as he was being, I still didn't like the fact that he had pointed a sword at my back only the night before. I didn't generally make a habit of introducing myself to potential murders. Still, it couldn't hurt to at least give him my first name. At least it was better than being called 'girl' or 'my lady' again.

"Eleanor," I answered, trying to hold still as he carefully wrapped the cloth around my arm over the leaves, "My name's Eleanor."

"An unusual name for a she-elf." He commented.

"Maybe because I'm _not_ an elf." I said exasperatedly once again, but this time he ignored me and continued treating my wounds.

"You are a long way from any kind of settlement, Lady Eleanor. How did you come to be out here by yourself?"

I opened my mouth, and then closed it again, biting my lower lip. Even if I _did_ trust him enough to tell all; how the hell was I supposed to answer? I barely had and idea myself. The last thing I could remember was walking bare foot down the frozen streets of my college campus. I didn't have any kind of logical reason for why or how I'd ended up in a cave in the middle of nowhere. I supposed I could try and lie, but something told me that this man would have _no_ trouble seeing straight through me. Plus, I'd always been bad at lying.

So, the truth seemed like the best option. Just maybe not _all_ of it.

"I don't know." I said slowly, watching his reaction carefully, "I was just walking home from a party, then all I can remember is waking up in a cave in the side of a hill. I don't know how I got there. I've been following the river for almost three days trying to find out where I am."

Finally he finished with my arm, tying the cloth he'd wrapped around it in a secure knot near my elbow before meeting my eye again.

"Well, that I can answer for you, my lady. You are on the western edge of the forest of Trollshaws. The river you were following was the Hoarwell ford which runs south as far as the Angle, where it then meets with the ford of Bruinen, or Brandywine River." He spoke with the knowledge and authority of someone who had obviously studied the land by experience rather than pouring over maps. I sat there and soaked in the names in silence. The names of the forest and river sounded awfully familiar, but I couldn't remember for the life of me where from.

Also, the fact that he kept calling me 'my lady' hadn't escaped my notice, and it was starting to get on my nerves. Seeing the thoughtful look on my face as I listened, my attacker/saviour continued.

"Where exactly is it that you are from? Your speech and accent are unlike any I have heard, and for a young…" he hesitated, and I was sure that he was trying his best to avoid calling me a she-elf again, "…female to find herself alone in this part of the world is a rarity, and not a lucky one."

You could say that again, I thought grimly, pretending to assess the condition of my arm before answering.

In for a penny, in for a pound, I guess.

"London," I said softly, "I'm from London. I'm a third year English Literature student at the Imperial University."

I was only half surprised to see the look of bafflement on his face. The more I spoke to this man, who I realised I still did not know the name of, the more I was beginning to believe that I was _much_ deeper water than I'd first thought.

"I'm afraid not familiar with this 'London' you speak of, nor this 'Imperial University'." He said, and he looked both genuinely bemused and a little mistrustful of me. I felt my hopes whither and die as my gaze fell back to my wounded arm. My eyes begin to water again and internally cursed. I hated the fact that I always seemed to tear up when I was frustrated or angry.

"Though perhaps I am merely unfamiliar with the name itself. Regardless, when I said you are far from any kind of settlement, my lady, I mean by at least a fifty miles in any direction." He spoke gravely, "You are obviously not a traveller, nor do you appear to be experienced in roaming the wild alone. So I must ask again. Do you speak the truth when you say that you _really_ have no idea how you came to be so far from your home?"

I stared at him. I had been right about him being able to see straight through me. I could practically _feel_ his eyes scanning my face for any hint of a lie. I nodded my head and bit my lip, not wanting to risk speaking for fear of collapsing into a gibbering mess. The uneasy tension was broken though when my stomach decided that enough was enough. It let loose a groan that sounded more like a miniature roll of thunder, and I felt my face flush with embarrassment.

"Then that brings us to your second problem." He spoke a little more warmly, turning to the fire and removing the fish that were now fully cooked. He handed one skewer with two toasted river fish on it to me and took the second for himself. Simple as the meal was, the fish smelled and tasted divine, and I had to physically force myself to chew slow enough so I wouldn't choke. Within minutes I was finished with the first fish and was deliberately savouring the second at a slower pace. When I was finally finished I put down the skewer, wiped my mouth and eyed the man tentatively as he continued to eat slower than I had.

I still found him frightening and was hesitant to trust him any further than I could kick him, but the fact that he had treated my wounds and fed me at least put him in my good books, for now.

"So… I've answered your line of interrogating questions." I said tentatively as he ate, "Isn't it about time I got to ask you some of my own?"

He looked at me over his skewer. He gestured more with his eyes and chin than verbally saying 'ok', but that was good enough for me.

"Ok, first question: why did you attack me when I first came into the camp?" I asked him, and he finished chewing a mouth full of fish and swallowed before answering simply.

"Forgive my bluntness, my lady, but in your haggard and soiled state I assumed you to be either a wandering thief or a very well dressed orc."

Had there been anything in my mouth, I would have likely spat it out. "An… _orc?!_ Are you serious?" I all but laughed in his face. Unperturbed by me and my cackling, he took a flask casually from his belt and I instantly smelled the thick scent of brandy as he uncapped it.

"I'll admit, it's unusual to find orcs this far west of the Misty Mountains," he reasoned seriously, ignoring my near laugh as if his answer was the most reasonable thing in the world, "But you were too small and too slight to be a troll."

He took a long swig from the flask and once again I was torn between bursting into maniacal laughter or just screaming. Seeing as neither would have made for a helpful reaction, I opted for just sitting there with my jaw slack and my eyes bulging like pingpong balls.

Seeing the look I was giving him, he raised an eyebrow and gingerly extended the flask to me. I ignored it.

"You're joking right?" I spluttered, trying to keep my tone jovial but it sounded more hysterical than cheery, "There's no way you can be serious about all this! Orcs! Trolls! No offence to your fandom or anything, but wandering into the woods with a cloak and sword? Are you a hard core cosplayer, or just a fantasy nut who camps in the local forests at the weekends?"

I laughed a little insanely at my own joke, but he didn't respond. He just gave me a genuinely puzzled, almost pitying look.I could practically see the thought brewing behind his eyes: 'Poor, mad girl, she must be half way off her rocker.'

Like _I_ was the crazy one here.

There was absolutely no way in hell or heaven that he could be serious… was there?

'_No__._' I told myself firmly. There was no way I was going to even let myself _think_ along those lines. Not at least until I had every last one of my questions answered.

"Ok, second question!" I fired back, jumping quickly back into my interrogation, "What is with this 'she-elf' nonsense that you keep calling me?"

The man hesitated for a moment, as if judging the best way to answer that question. Finally, he got up and moved over to the pack lying a few feet away. He picked up a thick curved hunting knife and I jumped as he unsheathed it. He saw my reaction and gave me what might have been a comforting look, carefully turning it over in his hand and offering it to me.

"See for yourself." He answered simply, and pressed the blade hilt into my palm.

Confused, I looked from him to the hunting knife. I could see the faint reflection of my own grubby face staring back up at me from the surprisingly well polished steel.

My own reflection…

Realising what he had meant for me to do, I held the blade up in front of me like it was a hand mirror. If it hadn't been for the distinctive shape and colour of my eyes and the small dimple in my cheek, I would have hardly believed it was me. My face was barely recognisable under all the grime, dirt and dried sweat. My hair was a mess of tangles, leaves and dried mud, and I didn't even dare contemplate the state of my clothes. But I ignored all of that — reaching up and pulling back the matted brown locks so I could clearly see my ears.

"What the hell?!" I swore softly, almost letting the knife slip from my fingers.

Sure enough, the tips ears were no longer round, but delicately pointed. _Pointed._

My first thought was that they had to be fake. Some kind of latex costume prop that had been put on me while I was asleep as a stupid joke. I ran my hands over them, even pulled hard on them, but all I could feel was the warm pulse of my own flesh and blood.

They were real. It was all real!

"Oh, _bloody __hell!_"

In hindsight, it was strange to think that out of everything I had experienced over the past week, it was this small change to myself that really rang as the biggest shock. More than the cave, more than being attacked with a sword, more even than having my arm burned to a crisp. But even so, it was still stranger to think that in all that time, that tiny changes had been there all along. All I need have done was stop long enough to look at my reflection in the river.

My internal monologue quickly sank back into hysterical gibbering as the logical part of my mind frantically tried to search for another explanation. But it could find none.

_'__Bugger.__'_

Swallowing thickly, I found myself almost dreading the words that I could feel forming on the tip of my tongue. I was already fairly sure what answer I was going to get.

"Last question. Well, it's actually two questions." My voice came out as barely louder than a whisper, "Who are you? And… what is the name of the continent I'm on?"

It was obvious that he didn't understand the significance of my second question, but he humoured me anyway, and answered both in the same sentence.

"My name is Aragorn, Ranger of the North, though most in these parts call me Strider." He spoke her sombrely, "And in the common language, this continent is known as Middle Earth."

I was utterly silent for ten very long seconds.

Then I let out a strangled, wheezing chuckle that quickly turned into a frantic, hysterical laughing fit.

I laughed, and laughed, and laughed. I laughed until my stomach rolled and I thought I was going to be sick, and all the while Aragorn just looked faintly alarmed by my reaction. It took a while, but I slowly calmed myself down again and regained my slightly shaky composure.

"On second thoughts," I croaked weakly at him, "I think I will take that drink after all."

* * *

><p><strong>Translations (Sindarin):<strong>

* "Don't be afraid, my lady."

** "What is your name?"

*** "You can't understand me?"

**A/N: I don't know about you guys, but that's a close to a realistic reaction to being dumped into Middle Earth as I can imagine. Also, if anyone spots any mistakes in the elvish translations, _please_ let me know! Hope you enjoyed it so far! :)**


	5. Part I : Chapter 4

**25 / 01 /15 ~ In which Eleanor gets a not so gentle reality check.**

**Disclaimer: **_"The Lord of the Rings" is the property of J.R.R. Tolkien. I only claim ownership over Eleanor Dace and the subsequent plot of her story._

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><p><em><strong>Chapter <strong>__**4**_

- An Unwilling Suspension of Disbelief** -**

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><p>I didn't sleep for two days after that.<p>

Well, not really. Sleep had just refused to come to me for any sustainable length of time, no matter how much I tossed and turned. I'd stayed awake for hours every night, whenever Aragorn decided we would stop our marching and rest until dawn. Given my situation, I had had little choice but to go along with him, especially since he had made it clear that his moral code would not permit him to leave a defenceless woman on her own in the wilds.

No arguments from me.

Even a whole day after the initial shock (which had involved a lot of cursing, swigging from the friendly booze flask, and Aragorn serenely telling me to calm down), I still couldn't fully believe what was happening. The rational part go my brain kept trying to beat my other senses into submission, repeating endlessly that none of this could be real. Even when I reached up and feel the warm and sensitive tips of my pointed ears, I still couldn't quite convince myself that any of this was really happening. It was as if I'd been thrown into one of the fan-character stories I'd written as a teenager.

My memory treated me to a flashback of something with painfully bad grammar and excessive use of the term 'violet orbs', and quickly shoved the thought away with a cringe. This was ridiculous. I was _not_ a she-elf. That I was _not_ somehow in Middle Earth. And I was _definitely_ not being led through a forest by one of my childhood heroes…

_'__Aragorn.__'_

I didn't really know quite what to make of him. He was very different from how I had imagined from the book I'd read as a child. He was taller, and older looking. I hadn't imagined his demeanour to be quite so severe and intimidating, nor his speech to be quite so abrupt.

Never the less, he was kind to me. Sort of. He didn't talk much, and whenever he did it was usually only to answer one of my frequent questions, and I'd had more than enough of those to make up for the one-sided conversation.

I asked about the forest, the rivers, the animals, the mountains I could see way off in the distance to pass the time, but I steered clear of anything too personal. I didn't want to risk him getting suspicious as to how much I already knew about him. That was a conversation I _really_ didn't want to get into. But anything and everything else I could think of, he answered.

My arm and hand also seemed to be improving surprisingly quickly. The pain and tingling was almost completely gone by the second day, but Aragorn still insisted that I keep the bandages on to keep it clean. He checked the state of my burns occasionally, but it quickly became apparent that that was as far as his skills as a medic stretched. Still, he never complained when I begged to stop and remove them for a while because the itching was driving me mad. But despite my endless stream of questions, I found it strange that he never once asked me about anything more than my immediate condition.

He never asked after my home, family, or where it was that I claimed to have come from. But I didn't mind. In fact I was glad he didn't ask. Every time I so much as thought of home my eyes would swim and a painful knot would appear in my throat. I caught him looking at me out of the corner of his eye a couple of time when I'd been like that, but he'd chivalrously turned away and pretended not to have noticed. I was grateful to him for that, even if he only did it because he thought I was insane.

We had travelled south for a day and a half before finally coming to a trail that took us through the outer edge of the forest. Whenever we stopped, Aragorn would set up a small camp fire and the tent, and we would eat a simple meal in near silence before one of us would take the first watch. Aragorn had told me during our traveling together about the dangers of the forests, and of the things that only came out after the sun dipped below the horizon.

"Do you think it merely a coincidence that it has the word 'troll' in the name?" he had asked me with a raised eyebrow, and I'd felt my insides squirm. "Though it's unlikely to find any this far from the Misty Mountains, there are still things in the wilds of this wood than I don't care to risk attracting with complacency."

So we took turns staying awake while the other rested. Not that I slept well. I'd quickly found that I physically couldn't sleep for more than an hour or two at a time, no matter how hard I tried to force myself to. Part of me wondered if it had something to do with the fact that I was apparently now in a she-elf's body. But my own personal Ms. Logic still insisted that it was more likely because my real body was comatose or something. After all, you can't fall asleep inside a dream — and whatever all this was, it sure as hell wasn't Inception.

Still, the feeling of not being able to really sleep bothered me. Whenever it was my turn to rest, I would curl up in the tent, close my eyes, and pretend that I was home again. I pretended to dream of my warm bed back in my cosy college flat. Of Katie and all my friends from my college. Of my family's home in the middle of the English countryside. Of my mother, and father, and my little brother who had just left senior school. I'd shed tears during those first few nights, but although the pain of longing for my family never really diminished, I found that the tears didn't come as often by the time we reached the edge of the forest.

It wasn't until our second night on the road that I realised I hadn't bothered to ask Aragorn where he was taking me, although I was fairly sure I knew the answer before I finally worked up the nerve to ask him.

"To Rivendell, my lady." He answered me with a glint of warmth to his eyes, "To the house of Lord Elrond."

Oh boy, as if I wasn't living enough of a cliche already…

And yet, for some unfathomable reason, the idea comforted me more than it logically should have.

The night before we reached where our trail met the edge of the wood again, Aragorn gave me the sheathed knife that I had used as a mirror a few days before.

"Have you ever wielded a hunting blade before?" he asked me, and I shook my head without hesitation, eyeing the blade a little skittishly. With a grunt, he took my good hand by the wrist and placed the knife's hilt in my palm. He angled it so the tip was pointing backwards towards my elbow with the blade facing outwards. "Hold the blade like this. You're small, so this will make it easier for you to defend yourself if your opponent is stronger than you. Only use it if your life is in danger. If you can escape without drawing your blade, you run. Understand?"

I swallowed and nodded sombrely. Well, at least that's something I _knew_ I could do well. Run away.

He nodded, satisfied with my non-verbal answer and handed me the sheath and belt. I tied it awkwardly around my middle since the buckle was far too loose for my considerably smaller frame.

"You think we're likely to be attacked then?" I spoke nervously, running my hand over the wooden hilt of the knife. Aragorn didn't answer immediately, which made me think that he was probably sugar coating the answer for me.

"I think it unlikely, but it pays to be cautious when wandering in this part of the world."

"Great, I'll take that as a resounding 'yes' then." I mumbled more to myself than to him. He gave me what I guessed was meant to be a comforting look.

"We are not far from the valley of Imladris, but not yet close enough to be out of harms way. Just keep your wits about you."

"Right, my wits. Nooo problem." I chuckled with a hesitant little smile at him, to which he returned with a simple nod.

It wasn't long after that that the trail finally began to taper out as we headed down hill. The terrain became noticeably more stony than grassy. When we finally came to the bottom of the long slope, I saw that we were walking in the base of a large river bed. The River Bruinen that ran down from Rivendell, I guessed. Thankfully it must have been the dry season, because the river was little more than a wide stream running up to our ankles.

The water was almost painfully cold, but the feeling of the it washing over my sore feet was like heaven. I hadn't stopped to think about the state of my legs and feet over the past few days. I'd been far more concerned with the state of my arm, or my new status as a she-elf to even think about the fact that I'd been running through the forests in bare feet for a week.

I stopped when we were about half way across, bending down to gently rub the grime from my filthy bruised toes. As I did, I caught my reflection in the slow moving surface of the water. It wasn't the first time I'd seen myself in my new body, but it still left me a little stunned ever time I saw my pointed ears poking out from under my tangled hair. The rest of my face and body was too plastered in mud, dirt and sweat to see if it was an improvement on my human self. But the one thing that I could clearly see that hadn't changed were my eyes.

They were still that exact shade of green with a tiny ring of gold near the centre. The exact same eye colour I'd shared with my mother, grandmother, and great grandmother. They were the one part of my appearance that I had always been truly proud of.

Delirious hallucination or not, out of everything else that had changed about me, I was happy that they had remained the same.

Then the stream of water suddenly became more intense, and my reflection vanished back into the ripples again. I heard Aragorn call for me to hurry and not linger from not far ahead, but his voice seemed to be quieter than usual. It was difficult for me to hear him over… what was that sound?

Still stooped over the steam, I slowly stood and turned my face curiously upstream. I was sure I could hear something else, deep and rumbling and not far away, and it was getting louder. Something like muffled thunder.

_'__No.__ More like__… __water.__'_

"Move!" Aragorn's voice suddenly thundered through to me and my head snapped towards him. He was half way up the river bank, beckoning frantically for me to follow quickly. I would have done so if I hadn't seen what had been the cause of his alarm.

What I could only describe as a wall of water was charging down the gully straight towards me.

I froze in terror, my whole body refusing to move from where I stood.

"Eleanor, run!" Aragorn bellowed at me, and something about the sound of my name snapped me out of it.

I ran. I couldn't remember running so fast in my life. My feet barely made splashes in the flooding stream as I flew over the riverbed in a sprint. But even then I only just made it to the bank as the river crashed down around me.

Before I knew what was happening I was yanked violently back, lifted up off my feet, and swept sharply sideways as the water surged. I fought hard to keep my head above the surface, but the current forced me down again and again. I gasped for air and instead was rewarded with mouth full of river water that made my lungs burn. I lashed out frantically with my arms and legs, searching for something, anything to cling onto.

The current surged again, and my arm struck something hard as I was pulled under. My fingers automatically latched around it, and I pulled with all my strength to get my head above the water. My chest burned as I choked and coughed, trying to suck in as much air as I could. I couldn't pull myself far enough out of the water to breathe anything other than foam.

I heard Aragorn yelling my name again, but before I could so much as figure out which direction he was shouting from, another crash of water hit me square in the face. My tired and weak fingers gave up completely and I was once again swept back under the river. I remembered hearing more than feeling the crack as my head smashed into the rocks. My vision instantly went dark, and the sound of the raging waters seemed to fade from a roar to a low rumble around me.

Somewhere far off I heard a splash and someone shouting.

Or maybe it was someone shouting and then a splash.

Either way, I didn't have time to really think about it much before everything went quiet and wonderfully painless.

~ / ~ / ~ / ~

_"__Finally back again are we?__" _My subconscious dream self's chuckle rang through my head.

I tried to give my intended insulting reply, but I dismally noted I was lying flat on my face, and my witty response was ruined by the fact that I had a mouth full of grass. My other self laughed merrily.

"Is this going to happen every damned time I manage to fall asleep?" I demanded.

_"__It would seem so.__" _

I pushed myself up into a sitting position and glared at her. She was sitting on the remains of a small stone wall with her legs neatly crossed in front of her. She still looked like an eerily familiar and yet strangely alien reflection of my own face, but I couldn't help but notice she was in far better condition than me.

She was dressed in a plain red dress with long tight sleeves which made her strange golden eyes gleam and her hair shine. I on the other hand, still looked like something that had spent the night in a skip, and it irritated me more than it should have. I spat out a few stray blades of grass in her general direction and she gave me an amused smile.

_ "__Though, I feel obliged to point out that you__'__re not asleep per se. I think asphyxiated into unconsciousness would be a more accurate description.__"_

"Yeah well, having your arm cooked medium-rare and then getting a river dumped on you will do that."

_"__Trauma to the head too.__" __S_he added in a nonchalant tone, _"__That tumble against the rocks looked like it hurt.__"_

"Yeah it did. Pity it didn't get rid of your attitude along with what's left of my sanity."

Her face fell into a deep frown and she placed a hand over her heart, _"__You could at least try and show a little gratitude. I__'__m only here because of you after all, and all you__'__ve done so far is-__"_

"Ok, ok, fine. I'm sorry." I interrupted, getting impatient with myself already. Honestly, even in my own head I couldn't get any peace. "I'm an ungrateful wench, you don't need to rub it in."

My inner self sniffed regally and looked down her nose at me. I had always taken no small amount of pride in the fact that despite being on the smaller end of 5'3, I'd mastered the art of being able to look down my nose at people miles taller than me. Now being on the receiving end of the metaphorical stick, I could see why the trait was so effective when I needed to deliberately piss people off. She was technically me anyway, but I still couldn't help but feel irked by how well she employed my own technique.

_ "__Anyway, I__'__m not here to chat.__" _She went on, sliding neatly down off her perch on the wall, _"__I__'__m here to help you.__"_

"Help me?" I questioned.

She walked calmly over to me, eyeing me with the irritating expression of an elder sibling forced to babysit a difficult toddler.

_"__Well, help_ _**us** really. Since I **am **you.__" __S_he added offhandedly, _"__And yes, I__'__m here to help. God knows you need it. Honestly, I can__'__t believe how clumsy and thoughtless you__'__ve become over the past few days. Are you trying to get us killed before we get any answers?__"_

"Clumsy? Thoughtless? Are you serious? I just spent the past two days lost in a wood, hallucinating that I'm in Middle Earth. The only person I've seen almost murdered me, then turned out to be a hard core cosplayer of a fictional character. And none of includes the fact that my real body probably unconscious freezing to death in a ditch somewhere outside this messed up dream." I spewed indignantly, "Tell me, how the hell were you expecting me to deal with it?"

_"__Better than this. Low expectations breed low standards.__" __S_he answered with acontemptuously flick of her hand,_ "__And I should know. I know what you are capable of, what you__'__re incapable of, your limits, your unconscious thoughts, and I know that you__'__re headed for a nasty end if you keep this up.__"_

I didn't realise it until I was at eye level with her that I was on my feet.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?!" I snapped angrily at her, "I don't see how standing here getting chastised by my own freaking subconscious is supposed to help me! You're not real! None of this is real! You're a trauma induced shadow of my own sarcasm at best! And I _still _don't know why the hell you are even here!"

I saw rage flare behind her strange amber eyes and watched in bizarre fascination as the reflection of my own lips twist into a snarl. I must have blinked because the next thing I knew she was an inch from my face, staring me down almost nose to nose.

_ "__Why do you __**think**__ I__'__m here?__" _She spat in a voice so hot and furious that it actually made me step back a pace, _"__I__'__m your __**coping mechanism**__, __you __idiot. I__'__m here because you are literally tearing your mind in half trying to convince yourself that this is not happening. Your brain is loosing it__'__s ability to cope because you keep trying to rationalise away reality!__"_

I just stared at her, suddenly feeling like a very young child being shouted at by an older sister. It made no sense since the one doing the yelling was technically me, but it rattled me anyway.

"Rationalise away reality?" I repeated blankly, the words obviously not really hitting their intended meaning. My other self came close to rolling her eyes, I could see it in the face that was identical to mine.

_"__Yes.__" __S_he said, and her tone suddenly turned from angry to pitying in under a second, _"__Heaven help you, I know better than anyone how __you us__e logic and rationalisation to solve your __problems. But I__'__m sorry to say that right now that isn__'__t going to do you any good__.__"_

"W-what do you mean?" I asked, a little frustrated that my voice had suddenly chosen that moment to turn croaky.

_ "__Look, I won__'__t beat about the bush here, Boos.__" _She said gently,_ "__The bottom line is that everything right now is actually happening to you, it__'__s 100% real__, and if you don__'__t start taking it seriously it__'__s going to get us very dead, very quickly.__"_

I was still for a very long moment, just staring at her, at me. It wasn't until she reached out and took hold of my hand that I realised I was shaking. Her hands were cool and soft, and I could feel the small raised scar on her right index finger that was identical to the one on mine. She led me over to the small wall that she had been perched on and sat me down gently. I couldn't seem to stop myself from trembling.

"So, what can I do?" I croaked out at last.

_ "__Simple.__" __S_he said flatly, sitting next to me,_ "__You have two choices. You can either go on pretending that this is some kind of dream, and eventually get yourself killed because you can__'__t face reality. Or you can accept that this is actually happening, and move forward__…__"_

She hesitated, and for a moment I could swear I saw genuine fear flicker behind her eyes.

_ "__But I can only help you if you choose the latter.__"_

I found myself nodding slowly. I forced myself to inhale deeply, the scent of grass and flowers filling me. I looked up at the sky, and realised that I could see far more than just stars hanging in the sky. I could see rolling nebula, far off comets, tiny wisps of cloud reflecting the moon's light. It was impossibly beautiful.

"W-will…" I stumbled over my words, no longer bothering to hide my fear, "Will you help me then?"

_ "__I can__'__t give you flat answers. At least not ones that you don__'__t already know the answer to. But I am your subconscious, your __**intuition**__. I can help steer you in the right direction. But you have to ask the right questions.__"_

"Right." I continued to stare up at the sky, choosing to focus on a couple of falling meteors that glowed gold as they passed through the atmosphere. "So what about all this? Right here I mean. Is this real too?

_ "__Well__… __kind of.__" __S_he answered, following my gaze.

"So this _**is**_ all just a dream then?"

_"__Yes, and no.__" _She said hesitantly. I sighed.

"Well that's delightfully unhelpful." I forced out in a poor attempt at humour.

_"__What I mean is that yes you are asleep, but no this isn__'__t a dream.__" __S_he spoke seriously, completely ignoring me, _"__Something happened to us before you came here. That much should be obvious even to you; otherwise you would remember how and why we ended up in that cave in the first place.__"_

"Okay," I said, trying to clear my head enough to unscramble my thoughts, "So can you tell me what happened?"

My other self looked noticeably uncomfortable, like her answer left an unpleasant taste.

_ "__I can__'__t say, because I don__'__t know. And I don__'__t know, because __**you**__ don__'__t know. I __**am**__ you, remember? You__'__re going to need to work that one out yourself before I can help.__"_

"It figures. No rest for the wicked, huh?"

_"__Indeed.__"_

I sighed, looking down from the sky and putting my hands on my knees. I could feel a slight ache appearing on the right side of my head, and across my right arm. When I looked down, my body was beginning to fade.

My other self gave me a sideways glance and put a hand on my shoulder. Either she was turning to smoke right in front of me, or my eyes were going out of focus again.

_ "__Looks like its time to wake up again__.__" __S_he said with a small smile that managed to look both grim and hopeful at the same time. She was going steadily more blurry and dark as the world faded into inky blackness.

_"__This might be our last chance. Lets make it count.__"_

* * *

><p><strong>AN: It's been slow to pick up, I know, but for the patient ones who are still here, things should start to pick up from here. See you next chapter. :)**


	6. Part I : Chapter 5

**25 / 01 /15 ~ In which Eleanor wakes up in a cliche.**

**Disclaimer:** _"The Lord of the Rings" is the property of J. R. R. Tolkien. I only claim ownership over Eleanor Dace and the subsequent plot of her story._

**A/N: Special thanks to Katosade and Mariale-26 for taking the time to be the first two reviewers! You both made my day, thank you! And now, onward with a long ass chapter…**

* * *

><p><em><strong>Part I : <strong>__**Chapter 5**_

- Muddy Water & Matted Hair -

* * *

><p>I woke to the feeling of a troll hammering a tire-iron against the side of my head.<p>

Every beat of my heart was accompanied by a dull thudding pain against the inside of my skull. I didn't dare open my eyes, but a little shift of my weight told me I was lying on something much comfier than the hard ground of the forest. My pounding head was also being supported by something that felt far too soft and comforting to be the rough cloak I'd used as a pillow. I rolled onto my side, half burying my aching face in the wonderful softness and slowly opened my eyes.

I was lying on what looked like an elaborate sleeping cot, in a room flooded with so much light that I though I might still be outside. When my eyes finally did adjust, I found myself looking around at a room which might have resembled a recovery ward in a hospital. Only, this hospital looked like it had been modelled on an Alphonse Mucha painting.

Everything was polished wood, carefully wrought stone, and soothing earthy coloured fabrics. The tall arching windows didn't have glass at all, and the breeze blowing dried leave in from outside was gently rustling long gauzy white curtains that fell all the way to the floor. Simple cots covered in white silk sheets were lined up next to each other along the room, all of them empty except for mine.

"I knew it, I'm dead." I mumbled and just gazed in awe at the sight around me, barely noticing myself sitting up on the cot, "I've died and woken up in a cliche."

"Finally, your eyes open."

I almost jumped out of my skin to see a tall dark haired woman in a long navy blue dress standing in a doorway, watching me with interest.

She was stunning. And I meant that in every literal and metaphorical sense there was. She had the kind of face that didn't look real it was so perfect — utterly flawless pale skin, coal black hair that fell past her waist, and almond shaped eyes the deepest and most vibrant shade of blue I'd ever seen. She reminded me of something out of a Renaissance painting of a Greek goddess hanging in the Louvre.

_'Da Vinci would have sold his soul to paint her portrait.'_ I thought past the haze of awe at realising where I was, and who I was likely gawking at. The beautiful elven woman smiled warmly at me.

"I trust you are feeling better?"

"Urrrh…" I responded cleverly. Always ready with a witty retort, that's me. Her smile widened, a laugh dancing behind her incredibly blue eyes.

"My name is Arwen." She introduced herself, confirming my starstruck suspicions at who she really was — not that it did anything to lessen the sudden lapse of my language faculties. I just continued to stare at her like a dumb struck moron. I tried to speak, but a sound more akin to a startled mouse came out of my mouth. I coughed and tried again.

"I'm Eleanor." I said in a tiny voice.

Arwen Undomiel, the Evenstar of Imladris, beamed at me again. It was mercifully less overwhelming the second time around.

"I know." She said.

I must have given her a less than comprehensive look, because she laughed lightly and added, "Estel gave us your name when you arrived. Although, I suppose you know him better as Aragorn."

I sat up a little straighter, ignoring the pain that shot through my head.

"Aragorn?! He brought me here? Is he here?" I paused in my rapid fire questions to let my battered brain catch up, "Wait, how long have I been asleep?"

"Two nights since you arrived. For a time it seemed like you might never wake." Arwen answered me promptly, crossing the room to set down a tray I hadn't even noticed she was carrying. It held a clay jug of water, a small ceramic flask, a tall glass, and what looked like a couple of bread rolls on a plate. She set it next to me on the nightstand, plucking up the small flask and unstoppering it before handing it to me.

"My father asked that I give this to you once you'd awakened. It tastes better than it smells, I promise."

"Your father?"

"The Lord in who's house you currently reside."

_'Yes, dummy, both of which you already knew. Engage your brain before you make an even bigger tit of yourself.' _My unhelpful internal voice scolded me, and I serenely ignored her.

I held the innocent little bottle experimentally up to my nose the smell was so pungent it almost enough to make me gag. Good lord, I hoped she was right. Not wanting to look childish in front of my world-be-nurse, I held my breath and gulped down the vile smelling concoction as quickly as I could. Thankfully it did taste ok, aside from being slightly too sweet. The moment the liquid touched the back of my throat, all my muscle aches and stiffness all but vanished into pleasant and relaxed warmth. Even the pounding throb in the side of my head was reduced to only a mild discomfort.

"Wow," I coughed and eyed the empty bottle, impressed, "That's some good stuff."

"A mix of _miruvor _and some other medicinal herbs _— _my father's recipe." Arwen clarified, handing me a glass of water which I gladly quenched my suddenly dry throat with, "Do you feel well enough to bathe? I imagine you would feel more comfortable in conference with the Lord of Rivendell if you were clean and appropriately dressed."

I finished gulping down my second glass of water and wiping my mouth before looking up at her, perplexed.

"Conference with who?" I wracked my brain for the memories of when I'd read the about Rivendell in the Hobbit, and the Lord of the Rings, "You mean the Lord of Rivendell as in Lord Elrond? Lord Elrond wants to see me? Why?"

"Well, he _was_ responsible for healing your head wound. Though all he told me was that he wished to speak with you once you were well enough." She replied, gesturing to where my head had been throbbing earlier.

Well, that explained why I was still alive then. I'd been sure that I'd finally gone the way of the Dodo when the river had crashed down onto me. If it really had been Lord Elrond who'd healed me, it seemed only right that I should thank him for bothering to put me back together again.

I looked dubiously down at myself. My arm had been cleaned and bandaged neatly at least, but I was still filthy, and _still_ wearing the mud covered dress I'd been found in over a week ago.

"Yeah, I think maybe I should get clean first."

Arwen led me to the end of a passage and into a small bathroom that was surprisingly modern compared to what I'd been expecting. Well, by modern I mean that it had running water, a mirror and a decent sized brass tub, which was good enough for me. I dazedly thanked her for her hospitality.

"You are very welcome. I will return once I have found you some suitable clothes." She chimed with a light smile, and glided off down another passageway.

The second I'd shut the door, I ran the water as hot as I could get it, dumped an entire bottle of sweet smelling liquid into the tub, and started peeling off the tatters of my old red dress. I must have stunk something awful, because the dress was all but stuck to my body with dried sweat and mud. It took a good five minutes to get out of the damn thing, and by the time I was, the tub was almost full.

Sighing blissfully, I finally sank myself into the almost scolding hot water, being carful to keep my injured arm safely on dry land. I'd only just noticed that it wasn't stinging anymore; and when I carefully started unwrapping the bandages to inspect it, I found that the skin underneath wasn't half as bad as it had been the day before. The skin was still a bit inflamed, but the blisters and gross peeling skin had all gone.

Well, that was odd. Even if I'd received fancy elf treatment for my injuries, I'd never heard of burns healing quite that fast on anyone before…

I was so lost in though that I almost fell out of the tub when a light knock came from the other side of the door.

"Élanor?" Arwen's soft voice came from the other side of the door, "I have a dress for you. May I enter?"

"Um… ok." I replied, sinking a little deeper into the water until only my bare shoulders were exposed above the bubbles. She entered soundlessly, laying a silky looking gown out on a chair before coming over to inspect me. She plucked a cloth from beside the tub, wetted it, and gently turned my face towards her.

"Lets find out what you really look like under all that dirt, shall we?" She said with a kind smile, and carefully began cleaning my face.

I instinctively drew my knees up to my chest, feeling deeply self conscious about my nakedness beneath the foamy bathwater, especially when the bubbles began to subside with the dirt. Arwen hardly seemed to notice though. After she's finished with my face, she busied herself with lathering my filthy tangled hair with lemon scented soap, being carful to avoid the painful bump on the side of my head.

She spent a full hour working on getting me as clean as possible, patiently scrubbing and rinsing my hair and face until the water around me had all but turned black with the dirt. Despite still feeling embarrassed at being tended to by someone who made most supermodels look hideous, I was grateful for her help; and very, very happy to be clean again.

"There we are, that's much better." She sounded pleased with her work. Helping me out of the tub and into a soft white towel, she sat me down in front of a small vanity table and immediately started going to work on my knotted hair. That's when I found myself looking directly into the first real mirror I'd seen since I'd been stranded here.

For a moment, I didn't recognise the girl staring back at me.

She had slightly wavy chestnut brown hair that fell just past her shoulder blades, still slightly damp and tangled from the bath. She had a soft oval face, not overly lovely but still pleasant, with a small mouth, a pronounced cupid's bow, and a dimple in one cheek. Her eyes were the only thing that were immediately familiar — jade green with a tiny band of gold around the pupil.

My eyes.

It was me. I was different, but I was still _me_.

I wasn't nearly lovely enough to hold a candle to Arwen, but there was a new kind of smoothness to all my features that I had _definitely_ not possessed before. My face was suddenly void of blemishes, lines or dark circles. It took me several moments before I managed to pry my star struck gaze from my own reflection, and mentally smack myself back into sense.

Good grief, what was wrong with me? Since when had I turned into a damned ageing-cream advertisement?

The next thing I knew, Arwen had finished combing and drying my hair, and had decked me out in a long mint coloured dress made of some silky fabric I'd never seen before. On a her, I'm sure it would have looked perfect. On me, the hems were about two inches too long. I had roll up the sleeves over my hands, and hold the silky fabric of the skirt up off the floor to keep from tripping over it.

Satisfied that I looked presentable, Arwen led me out of the bathroom and through the house. I followed her on bare feet, trying and failing to hide my sheer awe at the wonder of my surroundings. And that was just the hallways and atriums we passed through. I hardly noticed when we finally arrived at a large set of oak doors, and jumped a little when she knocked twice, and opened the door into a large study.

"Adar," She announced softly, giving me a gentle encouraging nudge into the room, "She is ready to see you now."

~ / ~ / ~ / ~

Lord Elrond was bloody tall.

Tall, regal, dressed in fine silk robes, and just as difficult to describe as his daughter had been. His face looked older somehow, and yet no less perfect or weathered by time. His hair was dark and straight like hers, but was neatly braided back in a long fishtail. His dark eyes practically oozed eons of wisdom and knowledge, and they were curiously surveying me as I hovered like a nervous chipmunk near the door.

I'd thought _Aragorn_ had been imposing. Now I suspected if he were to stand next to the Lord of Rivendell, he would have looked like a school boy.

There was something uncanny about the man that brought both a feeling of familiarity and unquestioning respect — an odd thing to feel since I'd never set eyes on him in my life. It seemed sensible enough to be polite, though I had no idea what the custom was with the elves and greetings.

Did I bow? Curtsy?

I ended up giving an awkward little wave and felt instantly stupid. He just smiled at me, amused, and it made his face look infinitely younger and less intimidating.

"Élanor, I am please to see you well again." He said, his tone of voice kind and soothing to my frazzled nerves.

'_Élanor.'_

Apparently when Aragorn had relayed my name to the elves the pronunciation had got a little lost in translation. Both he and Arwen put a lot more emphasis on the "_el"_ sound than I was used to hearing, and it made me wonder if my name actually meant something in elvish.

"Yeah, I'm feeling much better." I fumbled to find words that seemed appropriate, "Thanks for, you know… healing me." A silence rang thick in the air for a long moment as the towering elf lord surveyed me from in front of a massive bookcase he'd been perusing before I entered. For a fleeting moment I had ridiculous urge to jokingly ask if he had anything by Oscar Wilde on the shelves, but managed to kick myself back into sense at the last second. "Arwen said you wanted to see me about something." I said, shifting nervously from foot to foot.

"I wished to see how well you were recovering." He beckoned me over to a set of high backed chairs in front of a happily cracking fireplace. I skittered over and plopped down inelegantly into one, and Elrond sat facing me with an intrigued look. "But I also wished to hear the story of how you came to be in the forest for myself. Aragorn has told me much, but also said you spoke strangely when he found you, and of things he had no knowledge of."

My stomach dropped and I groaned internally. I hadn't thought of what I'd say in this situation.

I didn't have a believable backstory to draw on, made up or true. There was no way I could tell the frigging Lord of Rivendell that the reason I didn't have a backstory was because I was from an entirely different reality. Of all the things to come in useful in later life, I'd never expected the childhood obsession I'd had with one of my favourite fantasy books would be it.

If only I had the encyclopaedia-like knowledge of Tolkein's world I'd had as a teenager.

But I didn't. So I lied.

"I… was travelling." I started slowly, wracking my brains for the vaguest, most congruous story I could, "I got separated from my party somewhere in the forest, and found shelter in that cave. I must have eaten some bad mushrooms or something. I was delirious, that's why I was talking to strangely when Aragorn found me."

Elrond just looked at me. His face gave away nothing, but his eyes bore unblinkingly into mine. Then his gaze turned suddenly hard as stone and icy cold, and he said: "You're lying."

_'Shite!'_

I just stared at him, my jaw working feebly, and feeling very much like I was back in school sitting in the headmaster's office. I tried to form a reply, but my throat had gone bone dry.

"I would hear the truth from you, now." He said, calmly, but firmly — his stare pinning me to my chair like a butterfly to a card. I tried to think up something sensible I could say in response to being so easily caught out. Anything. But instead my panic took the reins and I started rambling.

"What else was I supposed to do?!" I blurted without thinking, frustration and fear warring for control inside me. "There's no point in telling you! There's no way you'll believe me! Hell, _I_ barely believe me!"

Elrond's gaze softened very slightly, and it was enough to take the pressure off and let me relax a little. He didn't look away, but he reached towards a tray on the desk and retrieve a decanter along with a small glass. Pouring a shallow amount of amber liquid into the glass, he offered it out to me and I automatically accepted it.

"Child, I have been alive for two ages, and have seen and heard more than you can imagine, let alone comprehend. There is little in this world that surprises me any more." He told me in a matter of fact tone, then leaned very slightly forward in his chair and fixed me with that unsettling stare again. Only this time, there was blunted by the finest trace of amused curiosity, "Try me."

So I told him. Just like that.

I told him everything.

I told him about my entire life. My university, my friends, my home in the English countryside, my childhood of traveling from country to country with my dad's position in the army. I talked about everything I could think of, from the towering buildings of London to the 'bizarre customs' of its people, like single women living alone, going to college, and all children being made to attend school. Every now and then, he would ask short pointed questions, and I answered every one as honestly as I could — adapting things like phones, cars and electricity into phrasing that I hoped would be easier to understand.

The one thing I didn't tell him was about Tolkien's books. That Middle Earth wasn't supposed to be real at all. It was just a story. How in hell could I have explained that I had knowledge of the future of this world, because in my world the history of Middle Earth was a series of popular fantasy stories? That was a rabbit hole I had no intention of going down if I could help it. My memories of the books were hazy at best anyway. I told him about my last day on Earth. I talked about my job, the party, and how I couldn't remember anything beyond walking home in the freezing cold.

I pretty much spilled my guts to him; and all the while he just sat there patiently, listening to it all. By the time I finished telling him about how I'd woken in the cave, the fire had started to die in the hearth, and he was watching me with an expression I couldn't read. A long silence hung in the air like a dense cloud once I'd finished.

Finally, he said, "You are either a very skilled liar, insane, or telling the truth."

Immediately I opened my mouth to declare that I wasn't lying this time, but he held a hand up to indicate he wasn't finished.

"If you are a liar, you are a painfully terrible one to present me with such a fantastical explanation." He said plainly. I bit my tongue hard to keep from pointing out the _magnificent_ irony of that statement, and he continued. "I gauge that you are too sound of judgement to be a true mad woman. Which leaves us with only one explanation: you are being truthful with me."

I just stared at him. I was probably in danger of catching flies my mouth had been hanging open so much lately.

"You believe me? Just like that?" I asked, dumb founded.

Elrond gave me a dubious look and arched an eyebrow, "Is there a reason I shouldn't?"

"I don't know. It just all seems… so _insane_." I trailed off feebly.

"And yet, clearly _you_ are not." He paused, "Although Aragorn seemed to think you may have been suffering from some kind of intoxicated delirium when he found you. You apparently couldn't stop laughing for quite some time." He rose gracefully from his seat to pour himself a glass from the decanter as well.

I realised that I'd been so enraptured with my rambling that I'd neglected my own glass, which was still sitting in my hand. I took a tentative sip, and the warm taste of honey and wild flowers rolled over my tongue. I hadn't even realised how tightly wound I was until I felt my shoulders begin to relax with the alcohol.

"You claim to be born and raised in a world where you are human, yet you very obviously reside in the body elleth now." He continued with a much softer and less accusing tone than before as he took his seat in front of me again, "Do you have any memories other than those from your previous life? Anything that might indicate who you might be in Arda?"

I tried to ignore the unsettlingly nauseous feeling that stirred in my gut when he said "previous life_"._

"Arda?" I asked, not immediately recognising the name.

"This reality. Middle Earth." He explained patiently.

"Oh," I mumbled, feeling a little silly for not already knowing that, "I don't know. I mean, I haven't really stopped to think about it until now."

"Then perhaps you should." Elrond nodded and gave me an expectant look. It took me a second to catch on, but I understood that he meant for me to do. I swallowed my mouthful of wine and closed my eyes. I thought hard, pushing back all the memories I knew where mine, and tried to focus on anything that I might have overlooked for the past few days. Anything that was unfamiliar, like it didn't belong. At first, there was nothing. Only dark shadows and shapes, just like in the dreams I'd been having recently before coming here.

Then something odd happened.

I noticed that I could hear something. Actually hear something. It was crackly and quiet, like the sound of a badly tuned radio being played in another room. But it was there. I tried to focus on it, pushing everything else away to the back of my mind until the sound was all I could hear.

It got only a little louder and a little clearer, but it was just enough for me to catch a single word, "Rah…Rah-va-mae. Rávamë."

"Rávamë?"

I opened my eyes briefly to find Elrond was sitting forward in his chair with a mixed expression of interest and deep thought on his face. I nodded slowly at him, shutting my eyes again and rolling the name around in my mind to see if it jarred anything else loose.

"I remember that name, but… it's not mine, it's someone else's… but I can't remember who's." I gave a huff of frustration, dropping my hands from where they'd risen to either side of my head, and opened my eyes again, "That's all I can hear. There's nothing else."

"You're sure that is the name you remembered? You couldn't have misheard it?" The elf lord asked me seriously.

I thought for a moment, the memory coming back as clear as if I was replaying a recording in my head. "No." I said slowly, listening carefully to the syllables of the word following through my mind, "No, I'm certain. Does that name mean something?"

"I'm afraid not." He said quickly. Maybe a little too quickly, "None that would give any clue as to who you truly are at least."

The crushing feeling of hope slipping away must have shown on my face because he looked down at me with an almost pitying look in his old eyes.

"You're certain you can't remember anything else at all?" He asked me again gently.

I didn't dare tell him about the sardonic second personality who seemed to have taken up residence in my head. That only seemed likely to have earned my a one way trip to the nearest looney-bin, if elves even had such a thing.

"No," I mumbled softly, unable to keep the hopelessness out of my voice, "That's all. There's nothing else."

He paused, for another long moment, and the space between each of his sentences seemed to stretch on forever.

"I'll admit, your situation is one I have never encountered before." He said at last, "Physically you are an elf, there is no debating that. Yet mentally, you are adamant that the place you belong is somewhere else. Somewhere you seem desperate to return to. Logically, it stands to reason that discovering _who _and_ why _you are here in this world should allow you to find a what brought you here."

The guy had a really roundabout way of saying it, but I think I understood what he meant. I was here, in Arda. There was no getting around that now. I had no idea why or how, but if I could figure _who_ I was in this reality by digging up my current body's missing memories, then that might provide a clue as to how I got here.

And how to could get home.

A tiny spark of hope rekindled in me, growing into a little flame at the mere suggestion that I might be able to get home after all. I peered down into the last of my wine thoughtfully, my fingers tracing anxious circles on the sides of the cut crystal.

"So, if you're right, then all I have to do to get back is figure out who I was before I woke up in that cave." I asked, refusing to let the tiny flame of hope in my chest fizzle out.

"I believe so."

"Ok then, how do we do that? There has to be something I can do remember quickly."

Elrond gave me an inscrutable look over the top of his glass, "Unlocking the mind is not as simple as unlocking a door or opening a book, Élanor. It will take time and perseverance."

My stomach did a back flip behind my ribs, "How much time?"

"Months. Perhaps years."

"Years?!" I spluttered, almost spitting out my mouthful of wine. He nodded once, and I slumped against the back of my chair, my stomach going from doing tumbles to contortionist manoeuvres at the thought, "But you're a master healer aren't you? Isn't there some way to… I don't know, magically shake the memories loose?!"

I felt stupid just saying it, but I was scrapping the bottom of the barrel for ideas. Elrond just looked at me with a mildly frustrating mix of patience and pity.

"Whatever magic or trauma there is concealing your memories from your conscious mind, it is not within my power to undo. To try may cost you your sanity, and that is a risk I would not take even if you were willing." He explained, his tone firm and unyielding. I knew before he'd even stopped speaking that I was never going to be able to argue with him. I felt close to tears.

"Then, what am I supposed to do?" I demanded, suddenly angry, "I can't get home, I can't contact anyone for help, and I can't even remember who I'm supposed to be here!"

Elrond paused for another agonisingly long moment, steeling his fingers in front of him thoughtfully. If he kept this waiting game up much longer, I was going to damn well throw myself from the nearest window just to see how he'd react.

"If there really is no place else you may go, then I would bid you remain here in the safety of Imladris." He said suddenly, catching me by surprise.

"Stay here?" I squeaked around the knot in my throat.

"You would be a ward of my house. Until your memories resurface, or as long as you choose to remain, you would be under the protection and hospitality of Rivendell." He explained, obviously catching on to my complete ignorance of what he was offering, and even then it took a long minute to really sink in.

He was offering to let me stay here, in Rivendell.

"You would do that, for a complete stranger?" I heard myself ask before I could think, "Why?"

Lord Elrond gave me a look of practically paternal reprimand, but I could see the tiny smile tugging the corner of his mouth. "I believe the more polite response would be to graciously accept."

"I am!" I caught myself, realising that I'd almost screamed the words at him, "I mean… thank you, Lord Elrond. But that still doesn't answer my question. Why?"

Elrond just continued to smile at me slightly sadly, as if I had asked a question that only a simple child might ask, "You are in need, and as far as you know, alone in this world. It is within my power to provide you with shelter. What else would you have me do in good conscience?"

Something nagging in a dark little corner of my brain was telling me that he wasn't telling me everything, but I ignored it. I didn't have any other choice but to trust him anyway.

Then I suddenly realised I'd forgotten something, or rather, _someone_ crucial.

"Where's Aragorn? Is he ok?"

"Calm yourself, he's fine. He left at dawn this morning." Elrond told me, and I couldn't help but feel a little disappointed. Barring Arwen, and now Elrond, Aragorn was the only other person in this weird and wonderful world that I'd had the chance to talk to. He might not have been all that easy to converse with, but he was real, and he was the nearest thing to a friend I had here — a pretty sobering thought, considering he'd almost skewered me with a sword a few days ago.

Elrond rose from his chair and walked over to a large oak desk on the other side of the study. He opened a drawer and withdrew something small and wrapped in slightly dirty cloth, "He did leave you this before departing, with a cautionary word for you to not to lose it again."

He handed it to me, and I unravelled it curiously from it's wrappings. Something slightly heavy and metallic fell into my lap.

It was a dagger. A sheathed hunting dagger. The same one I'd used as a mirror when he'd first told me I was a she-elf.

I couldn't help it.

I started laughing. And then I started crying.

~ / ~ / ~ / ~

Three hours later, I sat alone on my cot with a candle burning down next to me on the nightstand; my sheathed hunting dagger resting in my lap.

Arwen had shown me back to the infirmary shortly after I'd finally managed to stop sobbing into Lord Elrond's robes. The poor man. He'd been incredibly forgiving of my meltdown in his study. He didn't complain once, even when I left a damp tear-stained patch on the front of his pristine silk robes. He'd just patted me awkwardly on the back like I was a small child, all while I sobbed and hiccupped. Eventually I'd reined in my emotions and calmed down again.

I was relieved to be alone after that. Arwen had offered to sit with me after she returned me to my temporary quarters, but I'd politely declined, insisting that I needed time to think. And I did.

"_Months. Perhaps years."_

I couldn't get that one sentence out of my head. I could be stuck here for _years_, at least according to Lord Elrond.

The thought caused me equal amount of excitement and pain, now that I'd had a chance to get the panic out of my system. I was the Ward of Imladris now. I had the chance to experience Middle Earth first hand, see and experience things I'd only dreamt about at a child and teenager. I would literally be living one of my childhood fantasies…

But I wouldn't be able to see my family, or my friends, or my home.

I'd been going to college overseas for years, so I was used to living on my own far away from my family — but they'd _always_ been there when I'd needed them. The thought of not having my parents a quick phone-call or a few hours airline flight away was…

A dull pain appeared in my chest, just under my breastbone. I clenched a hand unconsciously over it, my eyes stinging but no tears coming. I doubted I had any left. I knew that the ache was nothing to do with my physical injuries.

Then another thought struck me: what if I ended up being here for so long that… I forgot them? Could that happen? Could I ever really forget my parents? My little brother? My friends? My home?

'_No_,' I told myself adamantly. I wouldn't let myself do that, no matter how long I was stuck here.

I _wasn't_ going to forget.

I hastily got up from the bed, and started rummaging around in the drawers of the nightstands looking for something reasonably pointy as an idea formed in my head. A few minutes of searching and I found a small letter opener in the third drawer down — not exactly what I'd been hoping for, but it would do.

I stayed up almost till dawn that night, carefully carving eight important words into the polished wooden hilt of my hunting knife, my only possession, before finally drifting off into exhausted sleep.

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><p><strong>AN: Whewf that was a long chapter and a lot of info to get through. Hope you guys enjoy, and please do drop me a review if you are pleased with what you've seen so far. Even the shortest reviews are appreciated! :)**


	7. Part I : Chapter 6

**25 / 01 /15 ~ In which Eleanor has way too much free time on her hands.**

**Disclaimer:** _"The Lord of the Rings" is the property of J. R. R. Tolkien. I only claim ownership over Eleanor Dace and the subsequent plot of her story._

**A/N: I don't know what the going rate is for reviews in the first two days of a story, but I'm pretty darn happy with the six of you so far! :) Thank you so much M. Margaret, Archeth, and anon who were kind enough to shower me with your praises! You are very much adored!**

**Now, let's press on with the final chapter of Part I, then it's onward to Part II at long last…**

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><p><strong>Part I : Chapter 6<strong>

- The Ward of Imladris -

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><p>Three months went by since I'd been made the Ward of Imladris. Barely any time at all for the elves, but for me it seemed like an eternity.<p>

Nothing had come back. Not a single whispered memory or fragmented thought from before I'd woken in that sodding cave. Not since I'd dug up that one name that made no sense from my scrambled memories. Not even my irritating second personality had been much help even though she'd been appearing in my dreams nearly every night.

I had quickly decided to dub her "Tink" — for Tinkerbell, the angry little fairy from my all time favourite Disney movie: Peter Pan. She'd accepted the condescending nickname with about as much grace as a velociraptor, but at least it got her attention. I was getting really sick of having to mentally shout _'Oi! Obnoxious split personality!'_ whenever I needed her attention.

I had managed to keep Tink's existence from Lord Elrond so far, and as promised he was helping me as best he could — both in recovering my lost memories and adjusting to life among the elves. Once every week I would visit his study, and he would spend hours helping me focus, trying to dig up what memories I could salvage from the shadowiest parts of my mind.

So far the only things I'd managed to scrape up were dark flickers of figures, places and words that were too shadowy or too quiet to be anything other than frustrating.

Patience, he preached. They would come in time.

Patience, my foot. I doubted a couple of months even registered as time at all when you were older than the New Testament. Regardless of what reassurance the elf lord gave me, regardless of the fact that I was technically an amnesia suffering she-elf now; I was still a twenty-two-year-old university student in spirit. Patiences had _never_ been one of my virtues.

But where my luck with recovering my memories was frustratingly non existent, life outside my head as the Ward of Imladris seemed like a never ending landslide of new experiences.

I was moved out of the infirmary the morning after my meltdown Lord Elrond's office, and was given my own modest but utterly beautiful room overlooking the gardens. From my small balcony I had a panoramic view of the entire valley and waterfalls running under the house. When I'd finally mustered the courage to venture down into the massive gardens, I'd seen someone I'd almost fallen over a bench in shock upon recognising.

Bilbo Baggins of the Shire.

He was difficult to miss at 3'2, brass buttons on his waistcoat, humming happily to himself and pottering around the rose bushes with his pipe. He'd introduced himself and offered to help me up when I _did _fall over at realising who I was seeing. It had been easy as breathing talking with him after that, Embarrassing falls made for a great ice breaker.

He was far more friendly and far less grumpy that my childish memories of 'The Hobbit' had lead me to believe. We'd chatted for hours that first day, and regularly repeated the routine for many days after — minus my awkward face-plant into the magnolias.

Aragorn returned to visit regularly; still as stoic and intimidating as ever, but I was still happy to have his company. I'd tell him about what I'd been up to since we last spoke, and he'd ask short and pointed questions, making sure that I wasn't causing problems for Lord Elrond or any of the staff. He even suggested that I asked one of the sword masters to teach me some basics, since I was becoming obvious that I was going a bit crazy with restlessness. Well, more crazy that usual.

It was nice to have someone who cared enough to check up on me, and I dare say he was even stating to enjoy our little chats.

He even smiled, once.

And then he'd gone and introduced me to Elladan and Elrohir — twin sons of Lord Elrond, and elder brothers to Arwen.

I'd always been under the impression that elves were all meant to be serene, subtle and mysterious creatures. That illusion had been masterfully shattered when Elladan's first words to me had been; _"Manwë's breath, you _**_are_**_ tiny!"_ That had been followed swiftly by a long series of pestering questions about myself, my life at Rivendell, my lessons, and a _lot_ of playful jibes about my height. I could have sworn I'd seen Aragorn biting his tongue to keep from laughing at me. It was like being back in school again.

They'd even given me a nickname. Well, I couldn't tell if it was meant as just a nickname or something bordering on mockery, but ever since Elrohir had said it one night at dinner while merrily jesting about my small stature, it had stuck.

"_Míwen"_ — roughly translating to "small lady" in Sindarin. Even in a fantasy realm I was still the butt of the 'vertically challenged' gag. Life just wasn't fair.

It was true though, at just 5'3 I _was_ unusually small for a she-elf; though no less graceful than one Arwen assured me, but I was pretty sure she said out of pity than truth. I had light-footedness that could make a professional ballerina turn green, but I still stumbled and fell over during my introductory classes in sword fighting. All of my senses were sharper that what I could have imagined as a human, but I still found I got easily distracted and ended banging my head on thing's I'd walked into. There was no escaping it. Nothing I did ever seemed to be quite perfect enough to match the elves.

The more time I spent among them, the more obvious it became that I was still human in everything but body.

Despite all that, I was _always_ made to feel welcome in Elrond's house. Any questions I had, were answered. Any activity I wished to partake in, I was welcomed to (no matter how catastrophically bad I was at it). I'd been trying to quell my boredom like that for weeks. So far, I'd achieved little more than mastering the art of playing 'Smooth Criminal' by Michael Jackson on the elvish harp.

The one new skill I was proud to have flourished in was — weirdly — the art of wielding elvish knives. The weapon had been suggested to me after a particularly awful swordplay lesson with Glorfindel, in which I had almost severed three of my fingers. I had thrown down my blade in frustration, taken the apple I had brought for my lunch and had thrown it over fifty feet. It had sailed across the gardens, flew straight over the head of an unsuspecting scholar, and down a squirrel hole half way up a cedar tree.

After that, I had abandoned swordplay altogether, and had happily assumed instruction in wielding a set of small but lethal elvish throwing daggers. And damn, for the first time since I'd come to Arda, I was actually _good_ at something.

Shortly after that, one other uplifting discovery occurred.

I found that, though my novice level Sindarin elvish was truly appalling, I was somehow able to read Tengwar script perfectly. I'd run frantically to Lord Elrond's study upon discovering it, babbled hysterically with excitement for about a minute, and then run straight off to the library. I refused to leave for three whole days, and Lord Elrond being the well humoured elf lord he was; had my meals sent up to where I'd all but buried myself in books and scrolls.

It was a gradual thing, my adjustment to life in Rivendell, but it was happening.

I found that the more I listened and watched the other elves, the faster I learned how to at least act like I belonged. Sometimes it even felt like I did belong — as if I wasn't really being taught much at all, only very slowly reminded of things I already knew, but had left untouched for so long that they'd withered away.

There was just one little problem…

"_None_ of the memories have come back?" Bilbo asked me one afternoon over a pot of freshly brewed tea. We'd sat in our usual meeting spot in the gardens; right next to the magnolia bush I'd fallen into on my first day.

"No." I confirmed morbidly, blowing on my steaming cup to cool it down, "I know all these things, but I don't know _how_ I know them. I know how to read Tengwar and throw knives the same way I know how to tie a bow or write my name. I don't think about it, it just happens."

Bilbo gave me a speculative look and chewed thoughtfully on his pipe, "Perhaps they just need more time to surface? Lord Elrond himself keeps saying that maladies of the mind take the longest to heal."

"I know, but if it was only a matter of time, don't you think I should have remembered _something_ by now? Anything? I've been here for months and I still can't even remember what my name was." I reasoned, trying to keep the frustration from my voice, "Just that one other name that makes no sense."

"Rávamë." Bilbo echoed quietly, nodding in recollection and puffing out a perfect smoke ring. I'd told him pretty much everything that had happened in Elrond's study on my first day in Rivendell — sans my status as Arda's latest illegal immigrant. He hadn't ever really been able to do anything to help, but he had always been willing to dish out advice, "No luck scouring the library for clues then?"

"No, there's no record I can find of that name ever being used in the library genealogy records, and I went back four thousand years." I grumbled, "I found about two hundred Bainthaurwen's, fifty Rivaleth's, even two Rythredis's. But no Rávamë."

"Perhaps not a person's name at all, but the name of a place? A city maybe?"

"Nope, I checked that too. Three times. No dice." I just shook my head and stared dismally down into my tea.

Bilbo gave me a gentle pat on my shoulder and uplifting smile that reminded me of my dad, "Don't loose hope yet, Miss Eleanor, I'm sure they will return someday."

He was right of course, but that wasn't really what was getting to me the most at the moment. The homesickness was what was really eating at me. If I didn't occupy myself with something, _anything_, I started to think of home.

And thinking of home hurt.

Three months of trying and failing to distract myself from that pain had been more than enough. I was sick of hurting. I was sick of being sad. I was sick of feeling hopeless. But more than anything, I was sick of sitting around feeling sorry for myself.

_"No more tears."_ I commanded myself right after my meltdown in Lord Elrond's study, _"If I've got time to sit around and cry, I've got time to get up and do something productive."_

The only problem was, there didn't seem to _be_ anything productive for me to do.

Finding something to do in Rivendell other than playing music, read, or drink endless cups of tea with Bilbo was a bit like trying to find an ice-cream truck in the desert. Everything was pristine and perfect, and always being attended to. From the Hall of Fire, to the waters gardens, everything was immaculately kept and no help was required in keeping it that way. I'd offered to help anyway, but the appalled looks I'd been given for offering to help in the kitchens had been humiliating.

I was the _Ward of Imladris_, they'd told me, horrified, a lady under Lord Elrond's protection. They could never have allowed me be seen doing dishes or scrubbing floors, no matter how much I might have begged. And I _did_ beg. Honestly, If this kept up, I was going to have to resort to something drastic…

" _'My mind rebels at stagnation, give me problems, give me work!' (1)_ " I mumbled a quote from one of my favourite mystery novels back on Earth. "I feel your pain Holmes. At this rate I might reduced to shooting the words 'Victoria Regina' into the library wall too."

Bilbo gave me a sympathetic smile that was laced with pity, even though I knew he head no idea what I'd just said. Meh, I was used to being looked at like I was one glow-stick short of a rave by now anyway. He patted my shoulder kindly, and we both just sat for a while, sipping our tea in a pensive but companionable silence. "A wise old wizard once told me _'the world is not in your books and maps, it's out there.'"_ He said after a while, " Perhaps that is your problem."

I turned to look at him with my eyebrows raised, my tea forgotten, "What do you mean?"

"Maybe you need to stop worrying so much about who you were before, rummaging through all those books in the library looking for answers, and focus more on who you are _now_. Maybe if you just let yourself just be _you_, the memories will come back of their own accord."

I thought about that for a moment. Could it really be that simple? All this time had I been trying to be someone else, and that was what was keeping me from remembering? I had no idea who I was supposed to be in this world, so up until now I'd been trying to dig up my elvish past with what I'd seen the over elves doing. Music, arts, and rifling through endless scrolls and book for clues. I'd kept trying because I'd hoped that it might eventually stir up something — throwing as much as I could against the wall to see what stuck.

But nothing had, because I'd never really had any interest in any of those things. I'd never really stopped to think about what_ I_ wanted.

I'd been digging for answers in the wrong place.

"Miss Eleanor?" Bilbo leaned forwards to peer curiously at me. Before he knew what was happening, I'd taken his face in both my hands and planted a big kiss on the top of his curly head. His face turned an impressive shade of magenta and I grinned at him.

"Bilbo Baggins, you're a pint sized genius! You've just given me an idea!"

With that, I jumped up and raced off towards the main house, leaving Bilbo sitting there staring after me with a baffled sound of, "Shall I finish your tea then?"

**~ / ~ / ~ / ~**

"You want to be trained as a healer?" Lord Elrond asked in both a confused and surprised voice. He was staring at me over his desk with a look I couldn't really read. Probably because I'd just come charging into his office without bothering to knock first.

"Yes! I mean… _Mae. G-goheno nin, Im—._*" I tried to remember how to say the phrases in elvish, since Lord Elrond had insisted I practice every time we had our meetings. This time he interrupted me with a quick wave of his hand and a faintly pained look. I couldn't blame him. I'd cringe too if I heard someone butchering my native tongue that brutally.

"Do not feel obliged to force your Sindarin, child. I see you are upset." He said gently, clasping his hands to rest on the desktop, "Tells me why this idea has suddenly occurred to you."

I hesitated before speaking again, trying to think of the best way of putting what I was feeling into words. Then I realised that trying to stick to a script here wasn't going to do any good, so I decided to just wing it.

"When I was human, running till I was too tired to think used to be my way of relieving stress. Now I can run an uphill marathon through the valley without stopping and barely get tired at all. I can read in the library for hours, but I'm not allowed to help do _anything_ around the house. I've been sitting around waiting for something to happen for three months, and it's driving me insane." I explained, wringing my hands together to keep them occupied.

Elrond's thick dark eyebrows furrowed together as he observed me, his faint worry lines deepening in confusion, "You have a very restless mind, Élanor. Under your circumstances, it is perfectly normal to that you would feel this way. Though I fail to see why you think becoming a healer might help. I've told you, there is nothing more that can be done to hasten recovery of your memory."

"It's not the memories I'm worrying about… or at least not entirely." I replied quickly, edging instinctively towards the desk while I flailed to find the right words, "I feel… useless. I've been here for months and I still have no answers, no purpose, nothing to do except pour over endless books or throw knives at a target. Don't get me wrong, you've been kind to shelter me, and it's beautiful here. But I just feel like I need something more to work towards; more than improving my grammar at least."

I realised I was rambling, and cleared my throat, embarrassed, "I know it's asking a lot, but I… I do want to be taught to become a healer. Really. I've been studying a lot, and I want to learn more than just what I can read from old scrolls and books in the library. So I… what I suppose I'm asking is, will you agree to teach me?"

For a long time Elrond just stared into my face. I'd become used to the long pauses in our conversations by now. I supposed when you were over three thousand years old, awkward silences just didn't seem that big of a deal anymore. Still, it made me feel like a gold fish in a bowel just standing there, waiting for his response while he just watched me.

Finally he spoke, his tone slipping from gentle to severe as easily as slipping on a glove, "I do not train apprentices by halves, Élanor. If this is what you really want, you must be willing to put your full effort in. I will accept nothing less."

Bloody hell. I hadn't been expecting that.

I hadn't fully believed he'd even consider teaching me, let alone agree on the spot. I realised my jaw was hanging slack, and I mentally smacked myself out of my daze and started nodding eagerly.

He continued, "It will not be easy for you either. You might have learned much these past few months, but your Sindarin is still… poor, and pouring over books is no substitute for years of practical experience. It will take a great deal of hard work, and I trust you know I would not show you any leniency simply because you are a ward of my house."

"I understand." I answered simply, and meant it.

"Then," He said with another slight pause, "let us hope your skills as a healer will be an improvement on your talents as a musician."

I felt my face flush pink in embarrassment, but let loose a small burst of relieved laughter when I realised that Lord Elrond was smiling warmly at me, and amused twinkle in his eyes.

"You should rest. We'll begin at daybreak."

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><p><strong>Translations:<strong>

* _"Yes. F-forgive me, I'm—." _(Sindarin)

**Quotations:**

(1) Sir Arthur Conan Doyle **_(Sherlock Holmes - "The Sign of Four")_**

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><p><strong>AN: Yay? Nay? So-so? Let me know your thoughts, people. I really like thoughts, especially in the form of reviews (wink-wink, nudge-nudge.) ;)**

**Next chapter will be first of Part II — hope you have enjoyed the build up of "Lapsus Memoriae" so far!**


	8. Part II : Chapter 7

**27 / 01 /15 ~ In which Eleanor gets two years older, but not much wiser.**

**Disclaimer:** _"The Lord of the Rings" is the property of J. R. R. Tolkien. I only claim ownership over Eleanor Dace and the subsequent plot of her story._

**A/N: Big barrels of thanks to M Margret, Mariale, and Tibblets for dropping me some really nice reviews. Seriously you have no idea how happy it makes me to get detailed feedback like that. Thank you guys :)**

**Now lets kick off the first chapter of Part II!**

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><p><strong>Part II : Chapter 7<strong>

- Black, Blue & Grey -

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><p>: <strong><em>Two Years Later :<em>**

I was lying in a flower bed when the first harbinger of change came to Rivendell.

It was one of the few places in the gardens that Glorfindel or my other tutors never thought to look when given the arduous task of fetching me. Only Bilbo ever knew I was there, and he always kept tactfully silent with an amused little smile on his mouth.

Nobody was looking for me today.

It was one of the few days I had free of lessons, and I'd been reading there behind the irises when the bell of the main tower started chiming across the grounds. It signalled the approach of someone in urgent need of assistance, and had roughly the same effect on me that an ambulance siren has on a paramedic.

I shot up out of the shrubbery so fast a flurry of leaves came with me, startling one of the nearby gardeners tending the rose bushes. The book on medicinal herbs I'd been studying fell to the grass beside me as hurriedly I scrambled to my feet. Impatiently I scooped it up, hitching up the skirt of my dress and started running full belt towards the house.

I was better at running now, or at least less clumsy than I'd been two years ago at the start of my training. No longer did I barrel headfirst into innocent bystanders while racing to get from lesson to lesson on time. I ducked and wove past the staff, only coming close to knocking one person over before making it to the courtyard outside the sanatorium. I was just in time to see the back of Glorfindel making his way up the steps.

There was a small form wrapped in a travelling cloak bundled up in his arms.

"Take him into the infirmary, quickly!" Elrond's calm but commanding voice came from the open doorway as the tall blond elf lord entered past him, "And would someone please find my apprentice!"

"I'm here, master!" I panted, following Glorfindel up the steps and towards where my mentor was moving inside.

Though competent by now, I was still not fantastic at speaking Sindarin. So I'd fallen into the habit of calling my teacher 'master' in the common tongue instead, which seemed to both please and amuse him most days. I had yet to persuade him to call me 'padawan' — a work in progress.

He peered at me as we moved inside, "Are those dried leaves in your hair?"

I felt myself flush, quickly brushing away the remains of the dead foliage and tugging my hair back into a messy knot, "I was reading in the gardens. What's happened?"

"There's no time for explanations yet, apprentice, he needs seeing to immediately. Go and prepare at bed while Glorfindel and I assess the damage."

Though a little peeved at being left out as usual, I went and quickly did as instructed. It didn't involve much more than hastily clearing some space in the surgery and throwing a fresh sheet over the nearest cot. Glorfindel pushed roughly past me a minute later and gently deposited the little body of a dark haired hobbit on the cot.

"Glorfindel, I would take it as a kindness if you were to make sure the others arrive safely." Elrond said quickly in that calm and controlled tone I'd learned only came up when a situation was serious.

"Of course." Glorfindel nodded soberly, and swept from the room in a regal golden blur without another word.

I turned to leave as well, but my mentor's voice stopped me in my tracks, "Apprentice, you will stay here."

Turning hesitantly back to the cot I saw Elrond stooped over the little form, carefully inspecting the bloodstain on the upper left side of his shirt. He was so small, even smaller than Bilbo, with dark curly hair and pale clammy skin that was fast turning the colour of sour milk. Tiny veins of black had raised around his eyes and neck, his face was contorted in pain, and when he opened his eyes I saw they were starting to cloud over with a misty film. I'd seen a lot in the time I'd been training as Lord Elrond's apprentice, but I'd never seen anything like that before.

"Are you sure?" I asked, not daring to step closer until I was absolutely certain, "You really want me here for this? It looks… worse than usual."

Elrond read my hesitation like it was a book left open on a table, and frowned hard at me. Since I'd become he apprentice, he'd adopted a very Yoda-esque _'do or do not'_ attitude towards my tutoring. Either I studied hard and learned how to do something correctly, or I got it wrong and reaped the consequences.

There was never any middle ground, and he did _not _approve of hesitation.

"Every challenge in life is a lesson, Élanor. You cannot pick and choose the severity of them." He beckoned me over without waiting to see if I'd listened, "Quickly now, tell me what you see here."

I hastily moved over to his side, peering down at the hobbit and gingerly and going through my ingrained routine of assessing a patient. I wasn't an expert like Lord Elrond or anything, not even close, but by this stage into my training I was starting to border on capable. It wasn't usual for him to hand the reins to me anymore, as a test to see what I'd learned. Also if there were any gaps in my knowledge that needed filling. I started prattling off symptoms out loud as I went down the mental list of symptoms to possible causes.

"He's feverish and in pain, but not convulsing yet so it's probably not septicaemia. Milky film over the eyes likely means some kind of poisoning." I carefully unbuttoned and pulled aside the hobbit's shirt, noting what I saw with a clinical detachment, "Darkened veins around the face, throat and chest… and the wound is… blackening, and… cold."

I jerked my hand away from where I'd pressed my fingertips to the skin around the stab wound just under his left collarbone. I'd read about symptoms like this before in my assigned studies, but even so I couldn't quite believe I was actually seeing it in front of me. Out of everything I could have thought up from my reading, this was by far the last thing I'd been expecting.

"Black Breath?!" I spluttered, looking up at Lord Elrond and half expecting him to announce the punchline of an elaborate joke, "Are you serious? He's been stabbed with a _Morgul knife_?!"

"He has." Elrond answered me simply, still using that serious but calm voice to prompt me on, "You know the theory behind them; they affect both body and soul. Which do we treat first?"

"The _hröa_ — the body." I said immediately using the Quneya word — the elves equivalent of medical latin — my head buzzing with memorised information, "His _fëa_ feels weak but it's still clinging on. I think it can still be healed, but if the body is not healed first then the spirit will just whither away inside it."

"Well said, apprentice." Elrond said it in a detached tone — a simple acknowledgement of my correct answer, "Though in this case, both must be treated at the same time. The blade's tip remains embedded in the wound, and is burrowing in. It must be removed before anything more can be done."

He beckoned for me to come and stand around the opposite side of the cot while he removed a bound set of medical instruments from a side table. He unrolled the set out on the stand next to the cot and began removing and disinfecting them in a quick and well practiced manner, "Time is of the essence here. You must keep the shard from causing more damage to his _fëa_ while I remove it physically from the wound."

I felt the blood drain from my face at that those words. My jaw started working wordlessly in panic. Elrond didn't even notice before I got a terrified squeak out.

"B-but, that would need me to do a _fëa_ link!" I stammered frantically, suddenly feeling very, very out of my depth. "I've never done one before! Not on an actual person!"

A _fëa_ link, for lack of a better analogy, was a little bit like physic surgery. It involved a lot of big words in Quenya to understand properly, but the basic idea was that you used your own _fëa_, or spirit, to 'clean and bandage' a psychological wound. It was supposed to help relieve mental trauma and speed up physical recovery, and just like any kind of surgery, it's difficult and really risky. I'd learned the basics — studying under Lord Elrond, you either learned fast or you didn't learn at all — but so far I'd only had practice using it to treat wounded rabbits and battle-spooked horses. I'd never attempted one on a real, living person.

"What if I screw it up?" I breathed almost silently, more to myself than my teacher but he answered me all the same.

"You will not _'screw it up.'_" He told me firmly, "He will struggle unconsciously against the pain. You must work to keep him as calm as possible."

I didn't move at first. I didn't trust my hands to keep from shaking. Lord Elrond didn't even pause in his preparation work, but looked up just long enough to give me stoney look that shot adrenaline into my blood. "You _will_ do it now, or not at all, apprentice."

It wasn't the first time he'd indirectly threatened me with expulsion as his student if I chickened out of a test. There was a reason for that; it worked. Chicken or not, in two years I hadn't backed out of a single one yet. I wasn't about to start now.

Swallowing around the terrified lump in my throat, I obeyed. Carefully I reached down to rest my fingertips against the hobbit's clammy temples and closed my eyes. Quietly, I began muttering the focusing chant I'd been practicing for months, willing my _fëa_ to reach down through my hands as if it were a limb all its own. The focusing chant wasn't so much about the words themselves, but the concentration and discipline behind them. Even if discipline wasn't exactly my strong suit yet, Lord Elrond had made damn sure I knew them well enough to recite in my sleep. The dark space behind my closed eyes began to slowly fill with dim colour, my mind painting a picture of what my _fëa _was sensing.

_'So far so good.'_

Then the image began to focus, and I almost recoiled at what I saw.

The poor hobbit's _fëa _had been savaged. Not as bad as it could have been given the weapon used, but enough to make me wish I hadn't looked. In the image my mind created for me, I could see the semi-corporeal form of the hobbit's soul in pale glowing blue — and the black essence of the shard wrapped around him. It sprouted from the left side of his chest, where I knew the physical wound was; and had coiled around his ghostly body like pieces of ethereal electrical wire. They were digging viciously into his translucent skin, leaving dark smoking lines where it touched him, choking the light from him with every second.

Words didn't seem adequate to describe seeing a soul being so brutalised, but spoken words didn't really translate well when you were working as an incorporeal spirit anyway. So instead, I tried to force calm and soothing thoughts down through the link between us, trying to reassure him it was ok. I was here to help.

It had roughly the same effect as tipping gasoline onto a campfire.

The semi-corporeal form of the hobbit began shrieking and thrashing like a rabbit caught in a trap, eyes wild, and teeth bared in primal panic. I had to literally cling on to keep from being thrown out of his head entirely. I gritted my teeth and tried again; this time less forcefully, but the more I attempted to send a feeling of serenity through the link, the more he seemed to struggle. Another sharp thrash and I almost lost the connection again.

'_Oh to hell with this!' _I thought, abandoning the air of calm entirely and instead going for the coil of dark writhing wire that was still latched around his throat, strangling him. I wrapped the incorporeal hands of my will around the barbs, and started trying to pull them loose.

Sharp, freezing cold pain hit me in a wave through my link with the hobbit. I felt it like shards of ice forming behind my eyes, frozen water seeping into my blood. The feeling was so sudden and so severe that I almost let go and collapsed where I stood.

Raw stubbornness was the only thing that kept me there. There was no way in hell I was going to let myself mess this up, my first real shot at healing another's mind, because of a sodding migraine. I schooled my focus, shoved the icy pain to the back of my awareness, and continued uncoiling the viciously sharp wires from around the hobbit's _fëa. _I lost all sense of time through the link, so I have no idea how long it took to remove all the pieces. When I finally pulled the last of the wires from around his neck he rasped out a strangled breath, and the pale representations of his eyes met mine for the briefest moment.

Then I felt the shard's icy presents beginning to wane, and realised that my mentor must have finally found it and begun pulling it from the wound. The blood-freezing cold started to subside to a merely arctic chill, and the pain in my head began vanishing. The chilly piece of wire clutched in my ghostly hands suddenly turned to smoke, and my extended consciousness was abruptly flung back into me like the snap of an elastic band.

I shrieked and fell back against the nearby wall, the link severing with a shock of pain. My eyes flew open, and I could see again. I was completely back inside my own body, and Lord Elrond was dropping the blackened shard of the Morgal Blade into a specially prepared fire. It was instantly consumed by the flames, turning them a nauseating shade of green with a sickening hiss of thick black smoke.

I looked down, half expecting to see the tortured ghostly form of the hobbit that I'd seen moments before. Instead, he was mercifully whole again, real, and had finally stopped struggling. He was still pale and clammy, but his chest rose and fell in steady breaths, and the wound on his chest was no longer black.

I let myself heave a heavy sigh of relief. He was ok. I hadn't screwed up.

Stupid as it was I had the sudden urge to laugh out loud. My first _fëa _link, and I hadn't messed it up. I had managed to helped someone.

Then something glimmered out of the corner of my eye.

I looked down to see what it was, and saw a small and gold band had tumbled from hobbit's pocket. I hadn't noticed while preforming the _fëa _link, but it must have clinked to the floor by my boot when he'd begun struggling.

Without thinking I reached down to pick it up.

Before I could, an old but vice-like hand seized my wrist and jerked it back before my fingers could brush the little trinket. I looked up sharply, and found myself staring straight into the face of a wizard. And not just any wizard.

A Grey Wizard.

"Best not touch that, my dear." Gandalf said with almost paternal reprimand, lifting my hand gently but firmly away and scooping the little gold ring up safely in a handkerchief.

With a rush of shame, I knew that the old man had likely just saved me from my own idiocy. I should have noticed it, realised what it was the moment I'd seen it. That wasn't just any ring that I had just tried to pick up. That was _the_ Ring.

Then that must have meant, this hobbit was…

"Oh, shite."

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><p><strong>Translations:<strong>

_"fëa" = spirit _(Quenya)

_"hröa" = body _(Quenya)

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><p><strong>AN: Love? Loathe? Let me know (especially those of you who spotted the Star Wars references.) You're feedback warms my soul. See you guys next chapter. :)**


	9. Part II : Chapter 8

**28 / 01 /15 ~ In which Eleanor behaves questionably in front of a lot of good-looking strangers.**

**Disclaimer:** _"The Lord of the Rings" is the property of J. R. R. Tolkien. I only claim ownership over Eleanor Dace and the subsequent plot of her story._

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><p><strong>AN: shiki: **I'm really glad you like it so far (and were amused by my not-so-subtle Star Wars reference XD). I haven't got a romance planned just yet, since I'm going to see which direction Eleanor and her story go naturally first. But hey, it could happen!

**Claribel21: **Thank you very much! It's really, really encouraging to hear that the effort I put into making her believable/likeable is paying off. Really hope you continue to enjoy it!

**Mariale-26: **Ooooh I think I might just do that now that now, if I can find the right moment! Keep your eyes peeled — if/when I put that in, it's for you! :D

**insomniac:** Firstly - I can _really_ empathise with that username since I'm writing this at 2:00am. :) Secondly - thanks for giving me my first real bit of constructive critique! I actually already know Imperial College London is a Science and Tech university (my mother went there as well), but for the purposes of this story I deliberately changed the name from College to University. It's a tiny detail I know, but it makes it safer for me to use in my writing if I don't reference the real Imperial College London directly. Well spotted though, and thanks for the feedback!

**Lana:** Tolkien purist or no; you're still more than welcome! Especially if you appreciate random Star Wars references! :D

**Guest: **Thanks for letting me know, I really hope you continue to love it.

**LittleApollyon: **Why thank you. I loooooove my reviewers. :)

**And now, I present you with everyone's favourite scene: the Council of Elrond. Hope you enjoy the long chapter!**

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><p><strong>Part II : Chapter 8<strong>

- An Abundance of Fancy Titles -

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><p>Frodo Baggins finished his recovery much faster than I think even Lord Elrond had been expecting. I'd been ordered by my mentor to tend to him during his recuperation — which mostly involved mixing up and applying topical salves and changing bandages. With the Morgul blade splinter gone, the rest of his injuries were fairly minor, and he would slip in and out of semi-consciousness whenever I was there.<p>

Bilbo and Gandalf had been coming in to see him regularly, and on the third day of treatment Glorfindel had come up to me in the hall outside and bluntly stated: "Master Frodo is awake. Your attendance is no longer required." Then he'd glided gracefully off down a passageway.

_'Probably to go and drop-kick puppies, or take candy from small children,'_ I'd thought sourly.

That of course meant it was back to work as usual for me. Elrond had me organising the herb stocks in the sanatorium this time. Cataloguing, checking dates of the harvest, making sure they were properly stored. It was mind numbingly dull work, but it left me with to think over what was happening.

It had been two years since I'd come to Arda, but my limited memories of Tolkien's stories hadn't faded much. I'd made sure of that. From my own fragmented recall of the books, and from talking with Bilbo about his adventures, I had a pretty good idea which part of Tolkien's 'story' I'd ended up in.

Frodo had been brought to Rivendell after being stabbed with a Morgul blade. Gandalf was here, Aragorn had returned as well, and the One Ring was here too. It hardly took a rocket scientist to put the pieces together. Especially when Lord Elrond told me the that there was to be a meeting of emissaries from all the free races of Middle Earth.

And it was to be held here in Rivendell, today.

And I was already late.

The reason for my tardiness was thanks to the towering pile of record books I'd been given the last minute task of returning to the apothecary on the other side of the house. Each book was as thick as my arm, stuffed to the bindings with loose bits of parchment, and weighed about the same as a small dog. I'd just about managed to stumble to the top of the stairs without dropping any or tripping over my dress, when something big and solid as a brick wall barrelled into me from my right.

If I hadn't been so weighed down with all the books, I would have been hurled backwards off my feet and into the air. As it was, I was saved from being bulldozed back down the stairs by a large hand seizing me by the wrist. The record books weren't so lucky. They were catapulted out of my arms, and crashed thunderously back down the stone staircase while loose pages flew in every direction like party streamers.

Hell. I was going to get _hell_ for this.

I whirled on the spot, more than ready to give the idiot that had ploughed into me a pointy-ear-full when my tongue suddenly lost it's ability to function. The man standing before me, still holding me firmly by the wrist, was not an elf.

The only coherent thought I could form at seeing him was; _'Oh thank God, someone with a **beard**!'_

"I'm so sorry!" He spluttered, quickly releasing my arm as if it was a hot poker fresh out of the fire. I'd barely opened my mouth to answer him when he stooped and started hastily picking up the papers that had been scattered like confetti over the landing.

I just stared down at him like an idiot.

He was a tall man, or at least he would have been if he'd been standing, with auburn hair he'd neglected to cut in a while. It fell almost to the tops of his leather shoulder guards. He was also broad across the shoulders, a trait I'd only seen in Aragorn and the elves who trained serious in swordplay. It was small wonder he'd nearly sent me flying just by walking into me. He stood up to hand me one of the books he'd knocked out of my arms, and I got a good view of a really nice pair of blue eyes to go with the russet bread. Clearly he'd won some kind of genetic lottery at birth, because he was handsome. Really, handsome.

After a few months of living in Rivendell I'd given up feeling self conscious about my own appearance, shortly after my first dress fitting with the house's seamstress. When you lived in a place where _everyone_ was beautiful enough to make Kate Moss look like a shrivelled hag, worrying about your own physical attractiveness kind of lost its relevance. There was no way I was ever going to be able to stand next to Arwen, or Glorfindel, or even Lindir and feel like anything but a toad. I'd had over two years to get used to feeling like the ugly stepsister, and it had stopped bothering me a long time ago.

But now it did.

"Please forgive my clumsiness, my lady." He apologised again, stacking the disarrayed papers and handing them back to me.

As was my custom when life presents me with someone of greater than average attractiveness: I started babbling like an idiot.

"Oh, don't worry!" I stammered breathlessly, "Thanks for, um… not throwing me down the stairs."

_'Smooth, Boss, very smooth.'_

_'Shut it, Tink. You're not helping.' _I silently growled at my internal double. She chuckled and fell obediently silent.

The human man scooped up another of the book and the last bits of paper within easy reach, but instead of handing them over, he held onto them and extended his hand palm up to me. For two horrible seconds I had no idea what to do. I just stared stupidly at him. Then I hastily started juggling the heavy books into one arm and allowed him to take my free hand. If he was bothered by my obvious lack of social graces, he made no show of it.

"Boromir, son of Denethor the Steward of Gondor, my lady." He introduced himself, and I felt my heart skip a couple of frantic beats as he stooped formally over my hand, "I'm here to attend the—."

"You're here for Master Elrond's council!" I blurted before I could stop myself; suddenly remembering him, or at least his name. Boromir gave me a very startled look and I slammed the lid down on my internal jar of spoilers before I could give anything away, "I mean, of course you are! Why else would you be here, right? Ha ha!"

I started laughing, but it came out a bit too high pitched and not burdened with much dignity, so I tried to subtly turn it into a cough. Boromir just nodded and smiled politely down at me, which only made it harder to focus on speaking like an intelligent being.

"Yes, I was on my way there now. But I'm afraid I've found myself quite lost. These halls are quite the maze."

"It's alright, I used to get lost all the time when I first got here." I said, but inside my head I was banging my head against a wall. Jeez, since when had I turned into the simpering, doe-eyed heroine from a trashy romance novel? And who gave him the right to be that good looking and charming? I _never_ had this problem with elvish men. They were all too pretty…

"You're not also here as an emissary for the Council. Are you, my lady?" Boromir asked, looking at me with polite curiosity.

"No. Well, not really, sort of…" I stumbled over my word, still trying to pull the shreds of my dignity back around me. He gave me another rather nice smile, raising a questioning eyebrow and clearing expecting an explanation. I tried to ignore it and coughed again to get my squeaking voice under control and looked down at the books in my arms. "I suppose you'll find out soon enough. I… have to return these first. Do you need me to show you to the hall?"

"I think that would be best, since I'm very likely to lose my way again if you abandon me here." He chuckled lightly, and began picking up the last of the papers littering the stairs, "Allow me."

"Oh you really don't have to—."

"I insist, my lady." He interrupted me with another small smile, "It is the least I can offer in return for my clumsiness."

I couldn't bring myself to argue. We spent the next five minutes collecting the last remaining bits of parchment off the stairs and landing, before Boromir chivalrously (and maybe a little foolishly) offered to help me deliver them to the apothecary too. She was a scary looking she-elf with the piercing grey gaze of an angry harpy, and she reminded me vividly of a librarian who'd once worked at my primary school. She gave me a thoroughly disapproving look at the shabby state the record books were in, but I'd already started herding Boromir back out the door before she could give me a grilling.

"Well, that was bracing." He muttered quietly the moment we'd retreated to safety back down the hall, "I've encountered trolls with more forgiving dispositions than your herb-master."

I snorted in a very un-lady like fashion.

"I did try to warn you. She's always been grouchier than usual around me." I gestured up at him. He all but towered over me by more than a foot, "I should probably be thanking you though. You just saved me from a very long lecture."

"I live to serve, my lady." He chuckled amiably. His smile must have been contagious because I couldn't help but smile back.

"Eleanor." I told him, "My name's Eleanor."

"A pleasure, Lady Eleanor."

I twitched a bit at the 'lady' part, but was pleased to hear him use the proper pronunciation for a change. I couldn't bring myself to be repelled by the cheesy dialogue. It had been years since I'd had the chance to talk to someone who looked like they were within a few decades of my own age.

When we finally arrived at the entrance to the hall I let Boromir walk in ahead of me, subtly trying to use his considerably bigger frame to disguise my own. It almost worked.

The hall was already full to the brim with emissaries from the elves, men, dwarves; and everyone already seated in a semi-circle and talking quietly amongst themselves. Only three people even noticed I was there at all. Gandalf, who smiled almost invisibly at me. Aragorn, who gave me only the tiniest nod of acknowledgment. And Glorfindel, who eyed me from were he'd been talking with two other unfamiliar golden haired elves.

_'Tic, tac, toe, three blond supermodels in a row.' _I chuckled silently to myself, schooling my expression and deliberately avoiding their gazes. Glorfindel in particular was giving me a withering look, and I had to fight not to scowl back at him.

He'd disapproved of me on principle since I'd quit learning swordplay from him a few months ago, in favour of something less likely to end in surprise amputations. To his credit, he had a good reason to dislike me — I _might_ have told him in a fit of pain induced anger exactly where he could shove his _"noble blade"_ before stalking out of the training ground. I'd been made to apologise of course, but it turns out elf lords as old as Glorfindel tended to hold grudges for a very, very long time.

"Lord Boromir." Elrond stood and welcomed the human man at my side with a formal bow of the head, bringing his hand to his heart in the elven sign of greeting. Then his eyes fell on me.

"Apprentice." He acknowledged me more quietly and with far less approval at my tardiness, gesturing minutely with his chin for me to take my seat. Boromir gave me a mildly surprised look at the revelation of my 'title,' which I met with a sheepish rise and fall of my shoulder before quickly taking my place beside my mentor.

As Lord Elrond's ward and apprentice, I had the seat directly on his left, while Arwen (who was never late for anything) as his daughter and only present heir, had the honour of sitting at his right. We were there as a show of formality for the visiting emissaries — more so Arwen than me. The only real reason I was even there was because most of the emissaries had heard that Lord Elrond was training a new apprentice, and they were all expecting to see her there in support of her master's council.

It was for that reason that I was under _very_ strict instructions to keep my mouth firmly shut for the entire proceedings. Two years as my teacher had been long enough for Lord Elrond to learn that my mouth tended to run whenever I was nervous.

"Strangers from distant lands, friends of old, you've been summoned here to answer the threat of Mordor. Middle Earth stands upon the brink of destruction, none can escape it. You will unite or you will fall. Each race is bound to this fate, this one doom."

Elrond, along with everyone else in the room, turned to face the hobbit who was perched beside Gandalf and looking pretty anxious about being here.

"Bring forth the Ring, Frodo."

I gave Frodo what I hoped was an encouraging little smile as he got to his feet, gingerly moving forward to where a stone podium had been set up, and placing the innocent looking gold ring onto it.

"So it is true." I heard Boromir's voice whisper as everyone in the hall fell into hushed mutterings as well. The atmosphere in the open air hall suddenly felt thick and heavy, and I knew without drawing upon my knowledge of the books that it was the effect of the Ring. No one in the semi-circle of different races seemed to be immune to it. I could see Aragorn eyeing Boromir out of the corner of his eye as the other man rose slowly out of his chair.

"I had a dream." He started slowly, far more dazed and less controlled than I'd seen him in the hall outside minutes before, "I saw the Eastern sky grow dark. But in the West a pale light lingered. It was crying 'doom is near at hand, Isildur's bane is found'. Isildur's bane…"

As if not fully realising what he was doing, Boromir's hand began to drift out towards the Ring. I felt my hands gripping the armrests of my chair hard enough to turn my knuckles white. I didn't remember this part. I didn't remember anyone succumbing to the Ring this quickly.

I wanted so badly to shout a warning, but my mouth remained tightly shut.

'_Don't touch it!' _My I screamed silently, but Lord Elrond didn't.

"Boromir!" He thundered aloud.

Then without warning, actual thunder boomed through the hall. It shook the pillars, rattled the leaves from nearby trees, and the autumn sunlight abruptly drained from the room as if covered by a storm cloud. I didn't even realise that it was Gandalf's _voice_ making the ground shake until I saw he'd stood up and his lips moving. He was speaking in a horrible twisting language that I couldn't understand, but could feel writhing all the way up through me like a serpent. It made my head spin and my eyes lose focus, and something deep in the darkest parts of my mind broke with an audible _snap. _

Then suddenly I was not in the council hall anymore…

I was standing in a field littered with the corpses of men, elves, horses, and horrifying beasts I didn't have names for. I was staring down at the body of a woman in dark armour lying in the bloodstained grass. A woman I didn't know by name.

A woman I'd just killed.

I recognised the blade protruding from her chest as my own, somehow. I'd thrust it through her heart seconds before. She was smiling up at me with a victorious grin on her beautiful face as the light faded from her inhuman yellow eyes, their pupils slitted like a cat's.

_"Well played, mîth pazâth.* Well played." _She laughed through the blood filling her mouth, pale flickers of gold fire collecting around the wound in her chest. The disturbing yellow colour was draining from her eyes as she looked at up me, _"Now it's your turn."_

Then the thunder suddenly stopped, and I was back in my body again. I could hear myself gasping for breath as if I was being held under water.

"Jesus Christ!" I rasped between breaths, slumping bonelessly in my seat and trying to pull my senses back together.

Whatever had just happened, I clearly hadn't been the only one who'd been affected. Prying my eyes open and looking around, I saw almost all of the elves present had gone pale and breathless too. Arwen was hunched over herself and looked like she was about to be sick.

Lord Elrond seemed to be the only one who remained in reasonable control of himself because he whirled on the old wizard with very near outrage, "Never before had any voice uttered the words of that tongue here in Imladris!"

"I do not ask your pardon, Master Elrond, for the Black Speech of Mordor may yet be heard in every corner of the West! The Ring is altogether Evil!" Gandalf countered, somehow managing to capitalise the word 'evil' without even raising his voice.

So that had been it. He'd been speaking the language created by Sauron himself — no wonder the frigging earth had started shaking. But that still didn't explain what on earth what I'd seen. It had been like a movie playing behind my eyes…

_'Tink,' _I called inside my head, _'what the hell just happened? What was that I just saw?'_

I heard the same confusion and excitement as mine reflected in her voice when she replied. '_I'm not sure. It looked like a memory of a dream, but… more real. Whatever it was, it happened too fast for me to get much more than you did._

_'A memory?' _I froze in my chair as the thought formed in my mind,_ 'You mean that could that have been one of _**_my_**_ memories?'_

_'Maybe…'_

I was vaguely aware of the fact that Boromir had started grandstanding again, but I wasn't listening anymore. My brain had gone from zero to full speed in seconds. Whatever that was I'd just seen, it had been the first thing to even come remotely close to a recovered memory I'd found since I'd been here. It had made no sense, and had been only seconds long; but after two years of waiting it was _something_.

I looked up from where I'd been staring at my hands to find Gandalf staring at me.

Everyone else seemed to have recovered from his impression of a Skrillex concert, their attention now focused on Boromir, but Gandalf's focus was fixed entirely on me. His normally kindly blue eyes were narrowed in an expression I couldn't read. Flickers of confusions, shock, and something else I didn't recognise all whispered across his face.

He'd seen something. Whatever had just happened to me, he knew something about it. I was sure of it.

I wasn't given a chance to so much as open my mouth to question him because Aragorn's commanding voice suddenly rang across the hall like a warning bell. "You cannot wield it, none of us can!" He spoke up with a severe look at Boromir, having been suspiciously silent up until now, "The One Ring answers to Sauron alone, it has no other master."

As kind and polite as Boromir had been to me, I saw right then that he was more than capable of looking down his nose at someone he deemed inferior.

"And what would a Ranger know of this matter?" He sneered. He'd clearly intended the question as rhetorical, because he and everyone else in the room looked stunned when one of the blond supermodel elves came to his feet.

"This is no mere Ranger," The male elf with shocking grey-blue eyes stated boldly, aiming them in a razor-sharp glare at Boromir, "This is Aragorn, son of Arathorn. You owe him your allegiance."

Boromir's eyebrows shot up, and he turned back to Aragorn with a renewed look of disbelief, thought this time it was tinged with shock. "Aragorn? This is Isildur's heir?"

"And heir to the throne of Gondor." The blond elf added, still fixing Boromir with a rather unsettling stare. I saw Aragorn put his face in his hands.

"_Havo dad_, Legolas.**" Aragorn told the elf with an almost embarrassed shake of his head.

I looked over at them all curiously. So that was Legolas? I'd been a soppy teenager back when I'd read the Fellowship of the Rings, but even then I'd never pictured him being _quite_ so… pretty. Even among the other golden haired elf lords, he managed to look like a pissed off Disney prince. He also looked more than ready to start off at Boromir again, but Aragorn abruptly fixed him with such a hard look that he closed his mouth and remained silent.

_'Know thy place, pretty boy.' _I thought just a little bit smugly, pleased to finally see someone else on the receiving end of Aragorn's 'stop-talking-or-unpleasant-things-will-follow' glare.

"Gondor has no king," Boromir murmured quietly at the elf with a hard look all this own, then turned to Aragorn with his sneer back in place once again, "Gondor needs no king."

I already knew Aragorn was no push over by any stretch of the imagination, but it still irked me to see him let Boromir talk to him that way and give no reaction at all. I peered over at him, trying to read his deliberately blank expression, but he avoided my gaze along with everyone else's in the room.

"Aragorn is right, we cannot use it." Gandalf announced once Boromir was seated again.

"Then you have only once choice." Elrond continued before anyone else could argue, "The ring must be destroyed."

"Then what are we waiting for?!" One of the dwarves with a huge red beard was suddenly up out of his seat and swinging a battle axe the size of my leg down at the Ring with a bellowing shout. I'd known what was going to happen before the axe came down.

What I _hadn't_ expected to happen was for the blade to explode upon impact, or for me to get hit in the face with a flying piece of the broken handle.

A blunt but big piece of wood clouted me right between the eyes, and I shrieked and almost fell backwards out of my chair. Both my hands flew up and clamped over my face as pain exploded behind my eyes. The blow hadn't quite been enough to break my nose, but it still felt like I'd been socked in the face with well pitched a rounders ball.

"What sorcery is this that shatters dwarven steel like glass?!" The dwarf bellowed in outrage, his shouting sending waves of pain through my temples and drilling holes in my eardrums.

"You seriously thought hitting one of the damned Rings of Power with an axe was actually going to work?!" I bit furiously at him without thinking, burning pain still pulsing through my entire face. It was only when I lowered my hands from my throbbing nose that I realised I hadn't snapped the words quietly; so much as angrily shouted them across the entire room.

Everyone was staring at me, mixed reactions of shock and outrage on every face; human, dwarf and elf.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Elrond slump in his chair and pinch the bridge of his nose. I felt a tiny pang of shame in my gut. I didn't get a chance to sink through my chair in embarrassment because the redheaded dwarf was already back on his feet, beard brisling in indignation.

"And who are you to speak out like that to any of us here, _girl_?" He yelled at me, and I swear to God I saw a tiny bit of spit fly. I opened my mouth to bite back an angry retort, but Elrond cut sharply across me.

"_Élanor_ is a ward of my house, and my apprentice." He stated with calm diplomacy, but aimed a severe sideways look at me and I dearly wished for the floor to swallow me whole, "And though you'll have to forgive her forthright manner of speaking, Gimli son of Gloin, she is correct. The Ring cannot be destroyed by any craft we here possess. It was made in the fires of Mount Doom, and only there can it be unmade. It must be taken deep into Mordor and cast back into the fiery chasm from whence it came."

He let his piercing gaze sweep one over everyone in the room and finished, "One of you must do this."

A thick silence rang through the entire hall. If a comedic cricket had started chirping in the background it wouldn't have been out of place.

"One does not simply walk into Mordor." Boromir broke it with an exasperated disbelieving tone, "Its Black Gates are guarded by more than just orcs. There is evil there that does no sleep. And the Great Eye is ever watchful. It is a barren wasteland, riddled with fire, and ash, and dust. Even the air you breathe is a poisonous fume. Not with ten thousand men could you do this. It is folly!"

"Have you heard nothing Lord Elrond has said?" Disney prince Legolas was on his feet once again, and this time he wasn't bothering to be diplomatic, "The ring must be destroyed!"

"And I suppose you think you're the one to do it!" The redheaded dwarf who I now knew as Gimli fired back, also getting to his feet and aiming his pint sized wrath at the blond elf opposite him.

"And if we fail, what then? What happens when Sauron takes back what is his?!" Boromir shouted over them both.

"I will be dead before I see the Ring in the hands of an elf!"

The chaos that ensued next could have put most bar fights to shame. Men, elves, dwarves, everyone in the room was suddenly on their feet, shouting and pointing fingers. I was half expecting someone to whip out a smashed beer bottle and turn it into a real blast form my bartending days. The only people in the entire hall who weren't contributing to the mayhem were Lord Elrond, Gandalf, Frodo, Arwen and me.

"This is insane." I mumbled in disbelief, just watching at the entire room dissolving into testosterone driven chaos, "Somebody's head's going to end up being paraded around on a spike at this rate."

"Be grateful it isn't _your_ head, apprentice." Elrond said grimly, still pinching the bridge of his nose. I swallowed nervously. It was an empty threat, I knew, but it was more than enough to show exactly how angry he was with me for the scene I'd just caused.

A small, clear voice cut through the mayhem of the council chamber. It was a voice I hadn't heard up until then, but I knew without looking who it belonged to.

"I will take it! I will take it! I will take the Ring to Mordor!" Frodo said bravely, though his bright blue eyes held fear and his face was scared as all eyes suddenly fell on him, "Although… I do not know the way."

Gandalf was the first to rise out of his chair and come to stand by the little hobbit, resting a companionable hand on his shoulder. "I will help you bear this burden, Frodo Baggins, as long as it is yours to bear."

I turned and saw Aragorn rise too, far more solemn than Gandalf but just as determined. "By my life or death, if I can protect you, I will. You have my sword."

"And you have my bow."

"And my axe."

I watched as both Legolas and Gimli too came to stand beside Frodo and Aragorn, though neither of them looking particularly pleased about being next to each other. Legolas in particular looked close to rolling his eyes.

_'Five down,' _Tink whispered in my head, _'Four left to go.'_

My heart started thudding in excitement as I watched Boromir slowly rising from his seat too. His eyes flickered briefly over the Ring one more time, before he smiled that warming smile of his at Frodo.

"You carry the fate of us all, little one." He said softly but with finality, "If this is indeed the will of this council, then Gondor will see it done."

Time slowed down for me in that moment as I looked around at them all, warring with myself inside where I still sat glued to my seat beside Lord Elrond.

Every instinct in me was screaming that this was _it!_ This was the opportunity I'd been waiting over two years for! If there was any chance left to help me finally remember who I'd been here and get home, it was this. My better sense was also growling at me to be quiet. What good would getting involved in this do? I'd read the books, albeit a long time ago. I already knew what was going to happen, mostly. What would getting involved accomplish? I'd just be throwing myself into danger on the off chance that I might find another clue to my past. But my instincts argues that staying obediently silent now would mean I'd be letting the only clue I'd had in years walk right out of my life, probably forever.

That's what it boiled down to in those few second. If I stayed quiet I'd get no answers; but at least I'd be safe. It _would _have been sensible to sit quietly and do nothing, but…

_'Hell, I've never been good at being sensible...'_

Slowly, I rose out of my chair too.

"So will I." I said, my voice a bit rough with nerves.

Elrond's head whipped around so fast I'm surprised he didn't give himself whiplash. "Élanor, what are you…?"

"You cannot be serious, girl." Gimli talked across the elf lord without missing a beat, eyeing me contemptuously behind thick eyebrows.

Doubt suddenly gripped me, and I almost sat back down again. But then I could suddenly hear a memory of my running coach's voice playing in my mind. He was repeating the lecture he'd given me right before my first 5k race: "_If you start telling yourself 'I can't do it', then you've already lost." _

So I stood there firmly, staring the gruff looking dwarf down as best I could from my significantly higher vantage point, keeping a harsh and haughty glare plastered onto my face. _He_ didn't need to know that my hands were shaking and my knees were trembling.

"Actually, I'm perfectly serious."

"The dwarf is right." I recognised the voice of Legolas and looked up from Gimli to find him staring straight past me at Lord Elrond as if I wasn't even there. "She is no warrior. She cannot have the experience or the capability of defending herself should we face danger along the way."

That irked me. At least the dwarf had had the decency to voice his displeasure at _me, _not my teacher.

"I'm still _here_ you know!" I bristled indignantly. Legolas finally turned his sharp grey eyes on me, sending me a cold look. It was actually kind of impressive how intimidating he managed to appear, considering he was almost as pretty as Arwen. If I hadn't already taken an immediate and thorough disliking to the guy's attitude, I might have asked him to teach me how he did it.

"You'd be a liability." He said flatly, and for some reason the words both chilled me and enraged me at the same time. I scowled, my pride and hope stung, and before I knew what I was saying the words were already out of my mouth.

"Liability suggests uselessness," I said, my tone icy, "And I wouldn't be useless to you."

Every one of the men in the hall except for Gandalf, Elrond, Frodo and Aragorn looked at me with damn near tangible levels of scepticism.

"Oh? And what kind of useful purpose is it you are suggesting then, _lassie_?" Gimli enunciated the nickname as if it was some sort of curse word meant to insult me. I started to speak again, but Frodo's small clear voice rose up out of the silence.

"I remember you," He said, and I turned to see him looking up at me as if trying to recall a memory that was very, very fuzzy, "You were there when I was being healed, and while I was recovering. You helped treat me."

"I… yeah, I was." I confirmed, shifting a little conformably from foot to foot. Strange that it was Frodo's tone of gratitude that had unnerved me more than the hostile voices of the others present, "Though, mostly that was Master Elrond's work. He took the Morgul splinter out of you."

Frodo frowned slightly, still fixing me with a startlingly blue gaze. I pointedly ignored the harsh stares and glares of the others present, and instead I spoke only to the hobbit who was still looking up at me with an expression I couldn't read.

"It's true, I am not a warrior, Mr. Baggins," I said hesitantly, choosing my words as carefully as I could, "But I've dealt with most injuries before. Broken bones, lacerations, concussions, burns. I can treat your wounds and stitch you back together as well as I can stitch up any clothes that need mending. If you'll let me to join you, I _will_ do my best to keep you and everyone who follows you in one piece."

I eyed Legolas and added, "Maybe two pieces."

The blond elf narrowed his grey-blue eyes at me, his lips pressed into a thin line. Then Gandalf came out with something I really didn't expected to hear from _any_ of them.

"I believe she should be allowed to join us."

If there's been surprised in the room when I'd stood up and offered to join them, there was damn near awed shock when Gandalf backed me up. He ignored the baffled looks (mine included) effortlessly, eyed me with a tiny conspiratorial twinkle in his eye and continued, "We can carry all the bandages and antidotes we wish, but that would be no substitute for a trained healer. And bar Lord Elrond himself, I doubt you could hope to find one present and willing with a steadier hand and a calmer head than his own apprentice."

I tried not to gulp.

Grateful as I was to Gandalf for his vote of confidence, he might have been exaggerating my abilities for the benefit of the crowd. Most elven healers had hundreds of years to master their craft. By comparison, my two years of intensive study with Lord Elrond probably equated to little more than an elvish crash course in first aid.

My mentor appeared to be thinking the exact same thing, because his frown was so deep that it looked as if a thunder cloud had rolled in on his eyebrows.

"Here!" Something, or rather someone, suddenly shot out of the bushed right behind me. A rather rotund looking hobbit with reddish gold curly hair pushed past us all and forced his way to Frodo's side, "Mr. Frodo's not going anywhere without me!"

"No, indeed not. It seems hardly possible to separate you two, even when he was invited to a secret council and you were not." Elrond commended dryly, though there was an amused smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

"Oi! We're coming too!" Two more hobbits came sprinting out from where they'd been hiding behind two nearby pillars and came to a stop on Frodo's other side, grinning excitedly, "You'll have to send us home tied up in a sack to stop us!"

"Anyway, you need people of intelligence on this sort of mission, quest… thing." The shorter one said sagely.

I found myself laughing despite my nerves and the hobbit grinned cheerily up at me. My giggles died quickly though when I turned to find my mentor looking at my seriously. He didn't look angry, at least not that I could tell. He looked… worried. Almost pained.

He gave my a searching look and finally said quietly, "If this is truly your choice, apprentice, then I will not stop you."

I couldn't explain why, but I felt an unexpected shot of sadness mix in with my anxiousness and excitement at those words. Then he swept his gaze from me and over the entire group of us standing there in the middle of the council hall.

"Ten companions?" He said quietly,"So be it; you shall be the Fellowship of the Ring."

All four hobbits smiled, but it was the shorter one next to me who said with a completely straight face: "Right… where are we going?"

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><p><strong>Translations:<strong>

* "little princess" (Adûnaic - speculative translation)

** "Sit down, Legolas." (Sindarin)

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><p><strong>AN: A massive thanks to those of you who have stuck with me though the sinfully long build up to this moment — it's a tenth walker from here on out. Let me know if you're looking forward to seeing more. :)**


	10. Part II : Chapter 9

**11 / 02 /15 ~ In which Eleanor has a not-so-enlightening chat with the resident wizard.**

**Disclaimer:** _"The Lord of the Rings" is the property of J. R. R. Tolkien. I only claim ownership over Eleanor Dace and the subsequent plot of her story._

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><p><strong>AN: aqua-empress:** Oooh, good word: "obnoxious." :) Thank you very much! I'm really glad you're enjoying Eleanor and her pop-culture-reference-filled antics. Here's hoping you continue to enjoy the ongoing story!

**M. Margaret:** Yes! Love Glorfindel too. Shame his part in the FotR movie got pinched by Arwen. And he simply can't stand Eleanor — I really didn't want this to turn into one big ego-trip where everyone loves her "just because." With her attitude she's bound to rub quite a few people the wrong way. As for Boromir; I agree. Though I think the reason he came across as being demonised in the movies was because they didn't focus much on the reason why he succumbed to the Ring. He loved his city so much and was so desperate to save it that it totally clouded his judgement. I personally think that gave his character a depth that movie!Boromir didn't have.

**Mariale-26:** No promises on the potential pairing just yet, but a Legomance may happen if Eleanor and her story decide to go in that direction. If I do end up spinning a romance into the plot, I'm going to try and let it happen as naturally as possible. All I can guarantee is that Eleanor and Legolas will indeed be very frustrating (and hopefully a bit funny too). :D

**Tibblets:** I intend to. :)

**Lana:** Lol, glad someone out there is cheering for her, besides Tink of course. ;)

**Also: there is a Poll up on my profile about potential future pairings - if you have a second to spare, I'd love your vote. But enough of my rambling! I'll shut up now I promise. On with the story…**

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><p><em><strong>Part II : Chapter 9<strong>_

- The Start Of A Bad Joke -

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><p>Four hobbits, two men, two elves, a dwarf, and a wizard go on a long walk to a mountain of doom.<p>

Now, if _that_ didn't sound like the start of a really bad joke, then I didn't know what did — and yet here we all were.

The ten of us were already several days into the journey, walking east towards the Misty Mountains according to Gandalf. I'd spent most of that time sticking close to either Boromir or the hobbits, enjoying the truly incredible scenery we passed. And all the while, trying to take my mind off the lingering feeling of our departure from Rivendell.

It had taken longer than I'd expected to leave. Supplies had to be acquired, travel plans made, and what little we were able to take with us had to be packed as light as possible. When we finally were ready to set off, I came down to the courtyard in my riding greens with my pack to find a farewell procession. Bilbo was there, along with almost every elf I recognised from the house. All of them there to see us off. The ageing hobbit had given me a fond smile after saying goodbye to his nephew, wishing me luck and leaving me with a light kiss on the knuckle for good measure.

Arwen had been present too, although she kept a solemn expression of propriety in place as she bade each of the Fellowship farewell and a safe journey. Her eyes had misted over slightly when they fell on Aragorn, and the two of them shared a long moment with more being said through their silence than they ever could have through words. Finally Aragorn dropped his gaze from hers and reluctantly turned away to see to the supplies.

Then she had finally come to me.

Instead of a morose farewell and a regal blessing like I'd been expecting, I'd found myself being wrapped in a warm hug that had smelled of lilacs.

"You never seem to find trouble in halves, do you?" I could hear her smile, though her tone was sad. It made my throat clench uncomfortably to hear it.

"I guess I don't." I said, hugging her back.

Arwen and I hadn't become the BFFs or anything, but she had been a constant positive presents in my time in Rivendell. She'd always been happy to sit with me while I studied, talk with me during the evening meals, sometimes even forewarn me if her father was in a particularly bad mood. She was kind and warm, and I already knew I going to miss her.

The goodbye from my mentor had been considerably less affectionate, but I'd been almost more pained to say goodbye to him than I had anyone else. He'd spoken in that serious but calm tone he'd always used during my practical training, but his eyes had softened behind the mask.

"I will not lecture you, Élanor. This choice was yours to make, not mine. All I ask is that you remember that you are in this company not because you are a warrior, nor because of your skill with a blade." He'd rested his hand on my shoulder, giving it a gentle but firm squeeze with a tiny, almost sad smile, "Be safe, _padawan_."

I'd felt my eyes mist over, just a bit.

And that had been that.

The farewell to the place I'd tentatively called a home for just over two years. It had stung more than I'd been expecting, seeing the 'Last Homely House East of the Sea' disappearing over the cliffs behind us. We'd been walking for just under a week when Gandalf decided that we should take some time to rest for a while, before finally turning south. He chose a rocky outcrop on the slopes of Misty Mountains to stop and make camp, and everyone was taking the time to rest their feet.

Well, almost everyone.

"Merry, your turn!" Boromir called at the hobbit, before going straight into another short series of attacks with his sword. Merry parried them all with his shorter blade, just as he'd been instructed minutes before — all while holding a half-eaten apple in his free hand and grinning cheerfully.

"Good, very good!" Boromir praised. Then it was Pippin's turn to defend, which he did with just as much enthusiasm as Merry.

"Move your feet!" Aragorn chipped in from where he watched the hobbits practicing, leisurely smoking his pipe.

I'd perched on a flat rock next to Frodo, and we were both watching in amusement as Pippin and Merry threw around compliments and batter in between Boromir's drills.

"Miss Eleanor, would you care for some breakfast?" Sam came up beside us, tentatively offering out a couple of plates filled with sausages, well cooked bacon and a small hunk of bread.

I'm not even a little bit ashamed to admit; I instantly started salivating.

"God, Sam Gamgee, you're an angel. Do you have any idea how long it's been since I've had real _bacon_?" I took the plate from him, taking a long moment to savour the smell of the cooked meat as he handed the second one to Frodo. The kitchen staff of Rivendell had been fantastic at their jobs, but the wonders of a proper English breakfast were something they had just never been able to grasp.

Sam on the other hand did, and damn could the little man cook food over a campfire like Jamie Oliver himself.

I dug hungrily into the sausages and rashers as Frodo filled Sam in on Merry and Pippin's progress. I felt a pair of eyes on the back of my neck, and only noticed Gandalf's pensive expression directed at me when I peered over my shoulder to see what the others were up to. He was perched a little way away with his pipe, looking thoughtful, and his eyes very occasionally flickering between me and the view of the mountain's foothills.

"Gandalf not joining us in the pork-festivities?" I asked quietly, noticing that he was the only one who hadn't been gifted with bacony goodness yet. Sam glanced over his shoulder and looked a little uncomfortable.

"I offered him some, but he said wanted some time to plan our next route _'free from culinary distractions.'_"

I looked curiously back at Gandalf again. It was the first opportunity I'd had since we'd left Rivendell to try and talk with the old wizard while the others were out of earshot. He wasn't looking at me now, but I had the nagging instinct that he was waiting for me to come over…

"I'll go see if he wants a cup of tea instead." I mumbled off-handedly and got up. I moved away before either Frodo or Sam could tell me it was a bad idea, taking the last of my angelic breakfast with me. I was curious, not insane.

The only other two members of the Fellowship who hadn't joined in the combat drills or the ritualistic bacon scoffing were our resident dwarven axe-swinger and elvish snob. Gimli was standing off a little way away, smoking his pipe and muttering to himself in what I guessed was dwarvish; and Legolas was 'scouting'.

I say scouting.

To me it just looked like he was staring vacantly off into the distance, trying to appear alert and mysterious. I narrowed my eyes at the back of his perfect blond head as I passed. Unlike the rest of the Fellowship, Legolas hadn't bothered to say a single word to me since we'd left Rivendell. He'd barely even looked at me, as if I didn't exist. It was probably for the best though. Judging by the look he'd given me after that scene in the Council chamber we'd probably get on about as well as sea water and an oil spill.

I already had one goldilocks elf lord who hated my guts in Glorfindel. One was more than enough.

I walked past the both of them and tentatively up to where Gandalf was smoking and surveying the view. I opened my mouth, not exactly sure of what I was going to say. I needn't have bothered because Gandalf knocked my composure flat on it's arse with three simple words:

"Eleanor Lucy Dace."

The bottom fell out of my stomach. If I'd been a cartoon character, my eyes would have popped out of my head and gone rolling across the ground, "Y-you know my real name?"

"Of course." The wise old wizard spoke as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Lord Elrond decided that it would be best if at least one member of this Fellowship was privy to your…" He turned from his pipe and eyed me with a faintly intrigued twinkle in his eyes, "Unusual circumstances."

"Oh, right…" I swallowed, not really sure of how I was supposed to respond to that. After a moment of just hovering there like an indecisive raincloud, I determined to just throw myself in at the deep end. "About what happened in the Council chamber…"

"You saw a fragment of your past, did you not?" Gandalf got there first again. This time it didn't take me quite as much by surprise. If the man knew everything I'd told Lord Elrond, and he was a wise as Tolkien made him out to be, there was a good chance he knew more about my situation than I did. He noticed my unease and gestured for me to come and sit beside him.

"I… I don't know what I saw." I said carefully, perching on the sun-warmed stone a few feet from him, the remains of my breakfast all but forgotten, "But it was _something_. More than I got from two years of…"

I stopped, realising I was in danger of waffling again. I bit my lip as Gandalf just watched me patiently. I knew what I wanted to say. I just had no idea how to ask it without sounding insane…

"Gandalf, the memory…" I began slowly, considering my words carefully this time before I let them out go my mouth, "It started when you used the Black Speech, and it ended the second you stopped talking. I haven't been able to get anything else since. So, I…I mean… is there a way to—?"

His expression shifted from amused to sever in less time that I took to draw breath.

"No, Eleanor." He interrupted gently but very firmly, "That is something you cannot ask of me."

"Why not?"

"The Black Speech is not a tongue to be thrown around casually. Were it not for Vilya's protection over the Imladris Valley I would not have dared voice it at the Council either."

"But it's the only thing that's knocked loose any of my memories in two years! Two years, Gandalf!" I said back, my voice raising a bit before I could suppress it. I was suddenly deeply and irrationally furious with him, "Getting them back is the only chance I have of figuring out how I got here in the first place!"

"And that alone is not a good enough reason to endanger us all by speaking the tongue of Mordor aloud here." He responded sternly, completely unaffected by my outburst. My shoulders fell and I looked away, my anger vanishing as quickly as it had come, along with my hopefulness. Gandalf's expression softened as he saw me deflate in defeat, "I'm truly sorry, my dear. Whatever other help I can offer in this quest of yours, I will gladly give it."

"Heh, I thought we were up to our knees in a quest already." I forced out a laugh, though it was hollow and left a bitter aftertaste in my mouth. I looked down at my hands, a little dirty and the nails chipped. I glanced sideways at him, "But you still can't really expect me to just sit back and do nothing about this."

"Oh, I'm not." He replied, glancing back at the others who were still enjoying their breakfast and mock-brawling, "There is a reason I supported your enthusiasm to join our company. I certainly don't expect you to sit idly while we walk headlong into Mordor. You are Lord Elrond's apprentice after all; your skills will be needed."

"A fat lot of help my measly two years of skulking around Rivendell will be against odds like that." I scoffed sullenly.

"I would not refer to training under Lord Elrond as 'skulking' if I were you, my dear." Gandalf told me in an amused but still reprimanding tone, "He doesn't take apprentices often, and those he does generally have a great deal more experience and skill to offer than you."

My eyebrows tried to retreat up into my hairline. I mean, I'd known I'd been asking a lot when I'd petitioned Lord Elrond to teach me. But I hadn't realised him agreeing had been quite that big a deal.

"Seriously?" Then… why did he say yes to training me? I mean, I barely knew how to tie a bandage before two years ago."

"Perhaps he saw some raw potential in you?" The wizard shrugged, blowing out a smoke ring that turned itself into the wispy shape of a butterfly. "I supposed we shall find out. Though let us hope we don't find ourselves in need of healer quite this early into our journey."

He took another long drag on his pipe. "But I digress. You must have faith, my dear. You have recovered one of our memories already, and by sheer chance. The rest _will_ return in time."

"You sound just like Bilbo." I smiled a little ruefully, my thoughts drifting back to the old hobbit.

"He spoke highly of you, you know."

I looked up curiously at Gandalf from the view of the mountains. "Bilbo? What did he say?"

The old wizard's blue eyes twinkled with silent laughter. "He said you tell very amusing stories, and make an excellent cup of tea."

I snorted through a laugh at the that. For the past two years Bilbo had been regaling me with stories of his own adventures (namely one involving thirteen dwarves, a dragon, and a very lonely mountain). So in return, I'd taken to telling Bilbo fairy tales from my world. I'd told him the story of Cinderella, Beauty & The Beast, Thumbelina, even Hansel & Gretel. I'd spruced up the language at bit, aiming to get them to fall somewhere between the original Brothers Grimm versions and the sugar-covered Disney renditions — and he'd enjoyed each of them thoroughly.

I'd been happy enough telling and hearing fantastic tales of adventures in the third person. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that I'd end up smack bang in the middle of one all my own.

I put my elbows on my knees and my face in my hands. "God, what have I gotten myself into…?"

"I don't believe your role in this company will be _quite_ as insignificant as you believe, my dear." Gandalf chuckled.

"How do you figure?" I asked.

"My instincts."

"Your instincts?"

He nodded, "They tell me that all things happen for a reason, and that you are here for a purpose. Although what purpose I cannot say, yet. But a purpose non the less. And I think your instincts tell you the same."

"Maybe," I mused, staring off at some darkening clouds forming over the hills in the distance, "But I already made the mistake of asking my 'instinct' for advice. Now I can't get her to shut up."

I'd meant it as a joke. A bad joke maybe. But the stoney look I got from Gandalf killed my laughter in its crib. It was the exact same look he'd given me in the council hall, right after I'd woken from my cryptic flashback.

I thought for a moment he was about to interrogate me further, or maybe critique my poor taste in humour, when Gimli's voice suddenly spoke up from behind us.

"If anyone was to ask for my opinion, which I know they're not; I'd say we were taking the long way round." He said, coming over to us but pointedly ignoring me and speaking only to the wizard at my side, "Gandalf, we could pass through the mines of Moria. My cousin Balin would give us a royal welcome!"

Gandalf gave the dwarf an even more unsettling look that he'd given me. Not because he looked disapproving, but because he looked suddenly, very deeply worried.

"No, Gimli. I would not take the road through Moria unless I had no other choice."

A clang of metal hitting metal caught all our attention. I looked round only to see Merry and Pippin had abandoned their weapon training in favour of simply dog-piling Boromir, both of them shouting, "For the Shire!" I burst out laughing along with Frodo and Sam, despite still feeling disheartened. It only got harder to stop when Aragorn went to break them up, only to wind up flipped onto his backside by the two hobbits pulling his boots out from under him.

None of us even noticed the darkened shadow on the horizon until Sam suddenly stopped chortling and frowned at something over Frodo's shoulder.

"What is that?"

"Nothing, it's just a wisp of cloud!" Gimli dismissed with a nonchalant wave of his pipe. All of us were looking now. Instinctively I swivelled to see Legolas watching it closely, his whole body gone ridged with concentration.

"It's moving fast… and against the wind." Boromir said quietly from behind us.

I stood up and squinted at the shadow on the horizon, trying to get my long distance vision to focus, "It looks like… birds?"

"Crebain from Dunland!" Legolas's voice suddenly barked without warning. I didn't have time to jump out of my skin before Aragon was shouting at us all to hide, fast. More spooked by the other's sudden panic than by the apparent flock of evil birds, I did as I was told.

Snatching up my medical satchel and pack I dived under a rock ledge out of sight. Boromir's shield appeared next to me a second later, followed quickly by its owner. I looked out past him to see the others disappearing into similar hiding places. I suddenly froze where I crouched. My eyes had landed on something they'd missed…

_'Sam's pack!'_

He must have been too busy putting out the campfire and hiding the remains of the cooking utensils to remember it. The sounds of beating of wings were getting louder. Aragorn and Legolas's reactions to the 'Crebain' were enough for anyone with half a brain to tell if they saw any sign of us here, it would be bad.

Without giving myself time to think sensibly, I belly crawled out from mine and Boromir's hiding place and shot as fast as I could across the clearing.

"Eleanor, get down!" Aragorn shouted from somewhere behind me.

I grabbed up Sam's pack and had just managed to fling it under an outcrop of rocks, when a hand stronger than some industrial clamps latched around my ankle and pulled hard. I fell flat onto my face and was tugged out of sight under a thorny clump of bushes.

"Be still!" An angry voice hissed right behind my left ear, and with a jolt of irrational anger I realised it was Legolas. Then the sounds of beating wings was everywhere, coming from every direction as the cloud fell on our hiding places like a swarm of bees. Even if I dared move to cover my ears, Legolas's grip on my upper arm had me pinned flat against the stone under the bushes.

Legolas is a lot stronger than he looks. I stayed still.

The sound of the squawking and flapping wings was almost deafening, but just as it was becoming almost unbearable to remain motionless, it started to fade. Only when the distant sounds of cawing had completely disappeared did Legolas's grip on my arm finally relent. I jerked away from him and crawled out from under the bush. My fingers went to rub the tender spot just below my shoulder where he'd grabbed me.

I could already feel a band of finger-shaped bruises forming under the sleeve of my tunic.

Back on Earth I'd bruised more easily than most. If someone poked me hard enough in the wrong place it would leave a mark. I was used to the familiar dull throb of the black-and-blue marks. It didn't hurt much, but I could tell it would if I hit or banged it on anything for the next few days. And knowing my luck, I'd do just that.

I made a half disgusted half irritated noise.

"Great. Nice to know that's another useless trait I've kept from Earth." I muttered. I looked over my shoulder to see Legolas already nimbly back on his feet. He glanced over at me with an annoyed expression, but it vanished the moment his gaze fell on where I was still inspecting my bruised upper arm. I quickly looked away and forced my hand to drop to my side. The last thing I wanted was for the uppity blond (and surprisingly strong) elf to think I was so pathetic as to get worked up over a bruise.

"Spies of Saruman. The passage south is being watched." Gandalf struggled out from his own hiding place as Aragorn and Boromir helped the hobbits. He turned from where the Crebain had vanished into the distance to the mountains and pointed to the peak of one covered in snow, "We must take the pass of Caradhas."

I was about to clamber to my feet again, when an upturned hand made it's way into my peripherals. For a moment I thought (or maybe hoped) it was Boromir being chivalrous again.

Alas — I found myself staring up at my personal Prince-Not-So-Charming. Legolas had a look on his annoyingly perfect face like he'd been made to swallow something unpleasant. And he was offering a hand out to help me up. I bit back a sour retort, but couldn't quite conceal my scowl. No one's perfect.

"Thanks." I mumbled begrudgingly, and allowed him to pull me to my feet. His unsettlingly blue-grey gaze skimmed over my face for a second, and his eyebrows pinched in a faintly confused frown. He looked as if I'd just spoken to him in a language he didn't understand.

"You are welcome." He replied stiffly after a moment. Then he turned and strode off without another word. But not before I saw him clenching and unclenching his fingers out of the corner of my eye — as if his hand had just been dipped in something fowl and he was resisting the urge to wipe it off.

The same hand he's just used to help me up.

_'Well, that was charming.'_ Tink muttered sarcastically in my head.

_'Swoon-worthy.'_ I agreed sulkily, and went to gather my things for our long trek up the mountain.

~ / ~ / ~ / ~

So four hobbits, two men, two elves, a dwarf and a wizard spend three hours climbing halfway up the side of a snow covered mountain with an unpronounceable name…

Another tasteless start to the equally tasteless joke that had somehow become my life. But at least the sun was shining.

It had taken almost all morning but we'd made it to the foothills of Caradhras. At that point in our merry uphill hike, I'd still been stewing over my odd encounter with Legolas and my not-so-helpful conversation with Gandalf. There was no changing his mind about the Black Speech trick, I knew that the second I'd asked. But there was also nothing I could currently do to speed up the process of 'knocking something loose' in my head.

That left me only two real options given my current situation: I could either mope and wallow in self pity. Or, I could be proactive and cheer myself up.

I chose the latter.

The quickest way to do that, I'd learned, was simple: chat with Merry and Pippin.

If telling funny stories or singing rowdy pub songs had been an Olympic sport back home on Earth, those two hobbits could have easily taken gold every time. By the time we reached the first snow on Caradhras I was so lost in their songs and stories of the Shire that I'd all but forgotten my conversation with Gandalf, and the dull throb of my bruised upper arm.

"You must have some tales of your own to tell about Rivendell, Eleanor." Merry said to me cheerfully as we plodded through the snow just a little behind Aragorn, Frodo and Sam. He'd mercifully agreed to drop the 'Miss' from my name.

"You mean apart from spending all my time surrounded by excessively hospitable elves with annoyingly perfect hair?" I smiled, and it turned into a small smirk when I saw Legolas's head twitch very slightly in our direction just a little way ahead.

"I'm sure it wasn't as bad as that." Pippin chipped in.

"It was beautiful, yes, but I like it out here. Theres sun, beautiful scenery, and no one calls me _'my lady'_." I threw Boromir a playful grin over my shoulder where he was taking his turn leading Bill the pony, "Well, most people don't anyway."

I'd been trying to get him to stop calling me by my 'respectable title' for two days, to no avail. He just smiled amiably and made a show of pretending to not have noticed my comment. I chuckled and turned back to the trail Gandalf and Aragorn had cut through the ankle-deep snow for us to follow.

"You seem a little carefree for an elf." Pippin told me seriously — an unusual thing coming from the hobbit who had not two hours ago been trying to teach me a song called 'The Drunken Green Dragon.' "Shouldn't you be, I don't know, more serene? Maybe a little less cheerful?"

"Would you really prefer it if I was less cheerful? I could start reciting macabre poetry if it would make you feel more comfortable." I replied equally serious, putting on the air that my old Drama teacher had adopted when quoting Hamlet, "Here, how about this: _'With thy sharp teeth this knot intrinsicate, Of life at once untie, poor venomous fool! Be angry, and dispatch—.'_(1)"

"No, no! That's alright!" Pippin interrupted me, looking slightly panicked.

"You sure?" I grinned.

"Very."

A gruff grunt caught came from just ahead of us in the line and I looked up from the two hobbits walking beside me. Gimli had turned over his shoulder in his marching and was looking at me dubiously, though it was difficult to tell since his dark red beard and eyebrows together covered about 60% of his face.

"What?" I asked, eyeing him uncertainly. He seemed to consider his words for a moment before answering.

"You make no sense, lass. You look like an elf, eat like a hobbit, curse like a dwarf, and talk like a man." He said after a minute, shaking his head slightly.

"Should I take that as a compliment coming from someone who curses every other sentence?" I replied, raising one eyebrow. He huffed and turned back to keeping up with Aragorn.

"You understand the language of the dwarves?" Pippin hissed quietly at me in surprise. I quickly shook my head and waved a hand.

"Nope. I'm just old enough to know a cuss word when I hear one."

"How old are you exactly?" Boromir asked me without warning.

I opened my mouth to reply but then snapped it shut, my stomach doing a weird little spooked-chipmunk manoeuvre. I was twenty-four in human years now, but I was also supposed to be an elf. In their years that would have made me not much older than a toddler. How in hell was I supposed to explain that?

My metaphorical bacon was saved by the merriment of hobbits.  
>"My lord!" Merry exclaimed in a jovial tone of mock horror, "I thought a gentleman never asks a lady her age!"<p>

Pippin chortled and Boromir turned a bit pink. "I meant no offence, my lady."

I heaved an internal sigh of relief and thanked my lucky stars for the awkward bullet I'd just dodged.

"It's no problem." I said, masking my relief with a polite smile, "And for God sake, stop calling me 'my lady.' It's just Eleanor; no _'lady'_ or _'miss'_ required. Makes me feel like an old school mistress."

"I shall try to remember that." Boromir replied with a small smile of his own. I let a still chuckling Merry and Pippin move on ahead, dropping back to pace beside him. We just walked in companionable silence for a while, trudging side by side through the ever deepening snow. Eventually the past few days worth of curiosity finally got the better of me and I turned to him.

"Boromir, you talked a lot about your city at the Council meeting. What's it like there?" I asked. He looked at me sideways, not displeased, but maybe a little surprised.

"Why the sudden curiosity?"

_' "Because it was one of my favourite locations described in a series of fantasy books from a world in which you and every other member of this Fellowship are nothing more than fictional characters. Oh, and I like the sound of your voice, because I'm a sappy fangirl." '_

I cooly resisted the urge to violently clobber Tink and her barbed tongue into silence, and instead said; "I've… read a lot about Minas Tirith, but never seen it. It sounds very beautiful."

"It is." He said and I saw a light kindle to life behind his eyes when he said it, "It is not called the White City for nothing. It towers over the fields of Pallenor in seven levels, each one carved from the side of the mountain itself. And the view from the Tower of Ecthelion is…" He trailed off with a faintly sad look making it's way into his expression.

"You sound like you miss it."

"That I do." His gaze fell on Aragorn who was still walking just out of earshot ahead of us, "It has been without a king for many decades, and my father Denethor II has ruled as Steward for many years… I had little idea I would find Isildur's heir when I answered Lord Elrond's summons."

I followed his gaze to stop on the back of Aragorn's head. He'd taken the lead from Gandalf for a while and was walking just out of earshot from us at the front of the line.

"He's not what you expected?" I asked quietly.

"I'm… not sure what I expected." Boromir replied softly, watching the ranger with a look that mixed curiosity and distrust.

I found it a little odd that Boromir hadn't known anything about Aragorn before coming to Rivendell. I remembered vaguely in the books that he'd come because both him and his brother had been given dreams about the return of a king to Gondor. But that hadn't been the case here. If he truly hadn't known, could I really blame Boromir for being surprised? The lost Heir of Isildur, hiding out in Rivendell among the elves all this time? And not a single human soul had known? Aragorn was many things: intimidating, quiet, weather-beaten, and downright terrifying with a blade in his hand. But he did not look like what you'd expect a king to look like. At least not to me.

To Boromir though? Maybe he did. It was hard to tell since they two had spoken about as much as Legolas and I had since that scene in the Council chamber. The unaddressed tension was starting to grate on my nerves.

I for one, did not handle tension or awkward silences well. So I decided to break this one wide open.

A wicked little smile spread over my mouth as an idea formed in my head. Boromir gave me a questioning look and I lifted a finger to my lips in the universal sign for quiet. Then I hunched down and began gathering snow into my hands. Merry and Pippin abruptly broke in their conversation upon noticing what I was doing. They immediately saw what I was planning, and Merry's face broke into a grin. Pippin clapped a hand over his mouth to hide the snicker.

"Are you sure you don't know any good pub songs, Eleanor?" Merry asked, trying to cover his snickering. "I'm sure we could all use a laugh."

"A mature and proper young lady like me? Perish the thought!" I started moving up the line towards Aragorn.

"Mature?" He scoffed quietly without turning around. I walked calmly past Legolas, Frodo and Sam with my armful of snow. They all gave me looks, but none of them tried to stop me.

"I'll have you know I'm exceptionally mature. And I'm shite at singing." I said primly, and dumped my double handful of snow down the back of Aragorn's cloak. He yelped in surprise and jerked away, trying to shake the snow out from were it had slide down the back of his shirt. Boromir and hobbits all cheered and guffawed their approval. Hell, even Legolas and Gandalf cracked minute smiles.

The laughter was interrupted by a short yelp and a thumping noise, and I spun to see that Frodo had slipped and tumbled backwards over the snow. Not missing a beat, Aragorn literally blurred past me, managing to stop the hobbit from rolling completely back down the hill. He pulled Frodo up out of the snow and to his feet. Frodo spluttered out a thanks, but froze as he abruptly felt frantically around his neck. My stomach twisted.

The Ring.

It took barely a second for me to spot it, without even really looking. It was lying in the snow, gleaming in the sunlight just a few feet away where Frodo had slipped. Boromir was closest. He immediately crouched down and picked it up by the chain. He'd not even finished rising to his feet when his expression changed, going from casually amused to something else I couldn't read. He just stared at it.

"Boromir?" I said carefully.

He didn't move.

And just like that, the fleeting moment of joy had completely gone. Every eye was fixed on Boromir from across the gap in the line. I saw Legolas's fingers twitch towards his bow, and my whole body tensed.

"It is strange that we should suffer so much fear and doubt, over such a small thing. Such a little thing." Boromir breathed quietly, more to himself than any of us. The change in his voice unsettled me. Consciously I knew it was the Ring's doing, but it still made my skin crawl.

Gone was the kind and courteous man who I'd been laughing with us minutes before. Now it felt as if there was a completely stranger standing there…

"Boromir!" Aragorn's sharp voice broke the silence, and suddenly Boromir was himself again, "Give the Ring to Frodo."

Boromir hesitated just a second too long before walking back towards the hobbit.

"As you wish, I care not." He said, extending the ring out to Frodo who quickly snatched it back. For a second I saw something unpleasant flicker in Boromir's eyes, but then he shook his head, smiled, and ruffled Frodo's hair before move back towards the rest of us.

It was bad enough that I'd noticed Aragorn very deliberately relinquish his grip on his sword as Boromir turned away. But what made me more uncomfortable was that my own hand — independent of my will — had moved from resting at my side, to hovering over the dagger pouch at my hip.

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><p><strong>Quotations:<strong>  
>(1) William Shakespeare <strong>(<em>"Antony &amp; Cleopatra"<em> - Act V Scene II)**

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><p><strong>AN: Updates will be coming a little slower from here on as I get into writing/editing the longer and heavier chapters. With any luck, I hope to get at least one update posted every week or so — so don't fret if you're impatient for more (which I hope you are.)**

**Thanks again to all of you who have taken the time to review thus far. Your feedback has been thoughtful and really helpful in keeping me motivated. See you next chapter! :)**


	11. Part II : Chapter 10

**21 / 02 /15 ~ In which Eleanor's fingers and pointy ears turn blue.**

**Disclaimer:** _"The Lord of the Rings" is the property of J. R. R. Tolkien. I only claim ownership over Eleanor Dace and the subsequent plot of her story._

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><p><strong>AN: M. Margaret: **Haha! Thank you! I know updates are slow, but hey; life is an unaccommodating host sometimes. XD It's such a joy to hear that someone loves the way I write (and is a fellow Boromir fan), and I promise Legolas won't be quite so hissy-mean forever — there's a reason for everything, right? Thank you so much for the continued support! Hope you enjoy the long-over-due update! :)

**LadyArcher: **Aw, I'm so happy you're enjoying it.

**Piacine: **Thank you very much! I too hope it turns out to be a success.

**thesonicsmiley: **Omg I started grinning like a complete idiot as I read your review! You have no idea how jazzed I get when I manage to make my readers laugh. And having Eleanor compared to Donna Noble? Totally made my day! XD Thank you so much for reading, and I really hope you continue to enjoy it!

**Mistra Rose: **Thank you very much! Oh, the others finding out who and what Eleanor is/was is going to be a lot of fun to write. I hope you stick around to see their reactions. :)

**tlyxor1: **I'm really glad! I hope you enjoy the update.

**Mariale-26:** Lol! I'm so glad you spotted that! XD I'll admit, I've never actually seen the Pride & Prejudice (2005) movie all the way though, though I adore the book (along with pretty much everything else Jane Austen ever wrote.) Legolas does have got a bit of a Mr. Darcy attitude going on atm, doesn't he? Perhaps I'll stick a P&P reference in there somewhere. :D Keep your eyes peeled for the next update, and so many thanks for your continued support! It really means a lot!

**Lane de Rivesen:** Thank you very much, it's really lovely to hear when someone enjoys my writing. As for the Eleanor and her cryptic history, that's a secret that will definitely be important later in the story. Hope you enjoy the next chapter! :)

**UrieNanashi: **Lol, Legolas seems to be turning into everyone's favourite to win at the moment; despite him and Eleanor getting on about as well as cats and dogs. I guess we'll just have to wait see if that changes any time soon. ;)

**Avarianna: **I'm happy you're enjoying it so far!

**Lana (****7): **Good to know, and thanks a bunch. I hope you enjoy the update!

**Eviline: **Wow, I wasn't expecting anyone to go to the trouble of reviewing so many chapters in one sitting. Personally, I don't tend to say the wisest things when I scared or nervous (or lost in creepy dark forests for that matter) — I guess I gave Ellie the same trait. Thanks, the feedback is appreciated. :)

**Wow, I got a lot of reviews for the last update. Thank you all so much! XD**

**FYI: The opinion poll is still up on my profile if you want to take your vote on any potential romantic hiccups in future chapters. I put it to you, dear readers; whom would you like to see Ellie get stuck with? (If anyone at all!) I'll be leaving it up there until I get a decent number of votes to see who/what is most popular. And now; lets raise the curtain on another chapter…**

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><p><strong>Part II : Chapter 10<strong>

- Snow To The Face & A Sting To The Pride -

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><p>Walking on top of snow felt like walking on top of polystyrene packing peas, which might have been ok if the wind wasn't howling around us at about a hundred miles a minute.<p>

Two hours after the uncomfortably tense moment with Boromir and the Ring, we'd reached the higher part of the pass. Just our luck; right after we'd begun to pick our way along a very narrow plateau, a blizzard had decided it might be fun to come along for the ride. Ten minutes later, everyone was literally up to their chests in the snow. The poor shivering hobbits could barely see where they were going as Gandalf carved us a path from the front of the line.

Legolas and I — being the only two elves in the company — had the benefit of being light-footed enough to walk on top of the snow rather than through it. Legolas moved effortlessly ahead of us all, barely leaving a footprint where ever he stepped. I on the other hand, had to cling inelegantly to the side of the mountain as I struggled to stay vertical, let alone keep up. The wind was so strong I was sure if I let go I'd be blown off my feet and over the edge.

"There is a fell voice on the air." Legolas called back at us from where he'd suddenly stopped at the front of the line. How any of us heard him over the howl of the wind, I have no idea — but from Gandalf's sudden reaction of horror you'd have thought he'd shouted 'bomb!'

"It's Saruman!" He yelled, just as a deafening cracking sound rumbled down through the cliff and through the stone beneath our feet. Fragments of ice, snow and rock the size of both my fists started tumbling and crashing down all around us, the pieces getting bigger with every roll of thunder.

One piece smacked straight down onto my bruised arm, knocking me into the snow and sending waves of pain up my shoulder.

"Argh! Bastard!" I cursed, equal parts pained and terrified.

"He's trying to bring down the mountain!" Aragorn shouted, pulling the hobbits as far back from he edge as he could, "Gandalf, we must turn back!"

"No!" The wizard clamoured back, pulling himself out of the snow and right up to the edge of the plateau. For a moment, when that old man opened his mouth and began to shout, I honestly thought an earthquake had come to join the party along with the storm.

"_Losto Caradhras, sedho, hodo, nuitho I ruith!_**_ *_**"

The wind only seemed to get more violent as the two wizard's voices thundered across the mountain tops, louder and more hellish that anything the storm itself could have conjured.

Then it happened again.

A familiar feeling swam in my head. The same kind I'd felt just before my first blackout/flashback in the Council hall. My vision swam, my stomach rolled, and my whole body went almost wonderfully numb. It wasn't a blackout this time. I could see shapes forming in the falling snow though my foggy vision, distant sounds appearing in the howling wind.

Two armies. One entirely of humans and elves all around me, and the other of nightmarish beasts and battle-crazed men charging headlong towards us over the field. A man in warrior's armour sat astride a horse at my side, his face turned to watch the first volley of arrows shred through the oncoming hoard. I knew that he was familiar, but I couldn't quite make out his face. I opened my mouth to say his name, but the sound was lost in the distant howl of the wind and screams of dying monsters. He turned slowly to look at me. I was sure that if I could just get him to meet my eyes I'd be able to recognise him…

Just a little more. I could almost see him!

I didn't even realised I'd moved perilously close to the edge of the plateau until someone short and very strong grabbed me by the scruff of my riding greens and jerked me back. The vision vanished in a flurry of snow. My head smacked hard against the cliffside just as an avalanche of shale, ice and snow hammered down onto the plateau, burying us all.

For seven horrible seconds, I couldn't breathe. I couldn't move. I tried to scream but icy snow filled my mouth and nose. If I'd been able to move my arms to claw my way out, I would have. Then a light suddenly hit my face as someone shovelled the snow off of me. I gasped and opened my eyes to see it was Gimli. He gripped my forearm and heaved me up out of the snow with a grunt of effort.

"You alright, lass?"

I wanted to scream at him no. I wasn't alright. I was freezing, terrified, and had been inches away from getting another clue to my past back, only to have it snatched away at the last second. But I simply didn't have enough air in my lungs to say all that. I hunched over and choked.

"Yeah," I rasped out between gulps of cold air, "I'm wonderful."

"We must get off the mountain, make for the Gap of Rohan, and take the West Road to my city!" I heard Boromir call at Gandalf over the gale, who was looking only a little better than I felt. Shielding us from Saruman's assault had obviously taken a good deal out of him.

"The Gap of Rohan takes us too close to Isengard!" Aragorn rebuked Boromir, and even I could hear the stubborn frustration in his voice. I lost it.

"Whatever you're going to decide, do it fast! Before we freeze to death!" I suddenly yelled at both of them, my lungs still burning from the lack of oxygen.

"How are _you_ freezing to death? You are an elleth!" Legolas shouted back at me over the wind. The bastard did't even had a hair out of place. Furiously, I flung up both my bare numbed hands for him to see.

"An elleth who's fingers and pointy ears are turning blue, Prince Charming!" I hollered back lividly, my temper snapping. Even though the blizzard, I saw the anger flare behind his eyes directed at me. But before we could start screaming up another storm at each other, Gimli cut us off.

"If we cannot go over the mountain, then let us go under it!" He said loudly, through a beard turned almost white with the snow caught in it, "Let us go through the Mines of Moria!"

"We cannot stay here! This mountain will be the death of the hobbits!" Boromir agreed through the silence, still sheltering a near hypothermic Merry and Pippin from the wind as best he could.

I could see the frustrated indecision in Gandalf's exhausted face as he turned back to us. He obviously did not relish the idea of heading to Moria, though I had only the foggiest recollection as to why. Something bad was in Moria, I knew that. But at this point, anything was preferable to enduring another hour of the icy wrath of Caradhras.

"Let the Ring bearer decide." Gandalf said firmly after a moment, and I could clearly see the lines in his face deepen with worry as he turned his eyes on the hobbit, "Frodo?"

The dark haired hobbit looked around at us all, his face showing the weight of the decision being placed on him. He remained silent for what seemed like an eternity before finally answering.

"We will go through the Mines." He said clearly. Gandalf's expression looked like the lid being covered over a coffin.

"So be it."

**~ / ~ / ~ / ~**

Somehow, we all managed to stagger down off the mountain and find a usable cave to shelter from Craradhras's fury that night.

I helped Boromir get a fire going the second we'd found enough dried roots and twigs to burn. Then we managed to boil just enough water to make everyone a small mug of tea each. I took out the little flask of _miruvor _Lord Elrond had given me before leaving — the same stuff I'd been given for my head trauma when I'd first woken in Rivendell. It wasn't much, but I let a drop fall into each cup, hoping it would take the edge off the cold. All four of the hobbits looked ready to go into hibernation, huddled together against the chill like penguins.

"We should rest here for the night." Aragorn stated, divesting himself of his sword and smaller weapons. Gandalf nodded tiredly in agreement, and all but immediately went to go collapse down by the fire. "Eleanor and I will take the first watch."

I looked up from handing Gimli his mug of tea, "We will?"

"Yes." Aragorn said simply, but there was stone in his voice.

Normally that tone would have unnerved me, but in my current waterlogged and shivering condition, it just irritated me. I'd been looking forward to curling up in my damp cloak as close to the soldering fire as I could get — trying to imagine I was somewhere a little more warm and dry. Like maybe the volcanic surface of Venus.

The others all began setting themselves up for the long night as best they could, the hobbit's being given the spots closest to the crackling campfire. Pippin, Merry and Gimli were all already out cold, and the others didn't look far behind. Boromir was looking glassy eyed as he absently stoked the fire, and I saw Legolas had already started to slip into the strange waking trance that was his equivalent of sleep. His grey-blue eyes were unfocused, but I couldn't shake the feelings that he was watching me as I walked past him to follow Aragorn to the mouth of the cave.

The ranger had sat just shy of the lip of the cavern, just far back enough to shelter from the wind, but close enough to get the best look out. It was also far enough away from the others that they would be almost completely out of earshot.

He said nothing, but I could see that he did _not_ look pleased.

I sat down hesitantly beside him on some rocks, the cold outside air already chilling me through my damp tunic and cloak. I pulled my knees up to my chest and tucked my arms in against them, trying to preserve what little warmth I had. The silence that stretched between us was only making it harder to focus on staying awake and alert. Only when the light snuffles of the hobbits, and Gimli's less quiet snores started coming from back inside the cave did I finally dare to voice what was going through my head. I already had an idea of what was coming next…

"Is this the part where I get a lecture?" I asked, my voice coming out a bit more sardonically that I'd intended. Clearly the 'manners' cortex of my brain had long since succumbed to frostbite, because I really didn't care at all about sounding rude anymore.

"It would be no less than you've earned. Especially after that stunt you pulled on the mountain." Aragorn said dryly.

"It wasn't a stunt. I—" I broke off at getting a better look at Aragorn's face. I swallowed and shivered a little harder at the expression he wore, "If this is because I dumped snow down your back, then I'm…"

"It's not." He interrupted me sharply, "I'm talking about your attitude, Eleanor. Your conduct at the Council meeting. Your reckless behaviour during the Crebain sighting. And your continued disregard for certain members of this company."

I frowned.

"You mean Legolas."

"And Gimli also."

I snorted through my nose and pushed my damp and tangled hair out of my face.

"Gimli doesn't care how I talk. Except that I apparently talk like a man. And Legolas is just pissed because I gave him a taste of his own attitude at the Council meeting."

Aragorn turned to me and fixed me with a very deliberate gaze from which I couldn't make myself look away.

" _'Possibly two pieces'," _He said very clearly, and it took me a second to realise he was quoting me directly. _" 'Prince Charming'_?"

Damn. The man had a wicked sharp memory. I just continued to scowl at him through my shivering.

"He was being an ass. It was ironic."

"It was insulting," Aragorn retorted cooly, "And a deliberately disrespectful choice of words."

"Do I look like a bastion of respect to you?" I asked, getting annoyed.

"You look like a half drowned rat." He said flatly, "And your behaviour has not been much of an improvement. You've been alienating people who you share a common goal with for the past two weeks."

"And they didn't?" I asked waspishly.

"Whether or not they did shouldn't matter. You are only responsible for your own behaviour, not theirs."

Sweet Lord, it was like I was ten years old again and getting a talking to from my dad.

"Why am I the only bad guy in this situation?" I demanded. It probably wasn't a good idea to raise my voice, but I couldn't help it. I was so cold, and tired, and getting angrier by the second. All I wanted to do was sleep. "It's not as if the prissy elvish git did anything to—!"

"Enough, Eleanor!" Aragorn's voice was still quiet but snapped like a whip-crack. The authoritative tone with which he spoke shut me up instantly. He stared down at me, bearing a sudden and unsettling resemblance to my old mentor when I'd made a clumsy mistake.

"You are being _childish_." He emphasised the word, and it stung. "You are a Ward of Imladris. You are not only representing yourself, but Lord Elrond as well. I will not see you drag his name through the dirt."

He met all my fiery frustrated anger with cold steel in his eyes. Eyes that had seen a hell of a lot more of this insane world that I had.

And had been left scarred by it…

I shivered and looked away first, my pride still stinging. We just sat there in silence for ages, staring out at the blizzard howling across the mountain. I wished I could have found something to say in response. Anything. But nothing I could have said at that point would have changed the fact that deep down I knew Aragorn was right. I'd knowingly got myself into the Fellowship, into this whole situation, and yet I was still insisting on blaming others for my own issues.

It was only now I was finally realising the reason why:

I was scared.

I was really frigging _scared_ of what we were facing. Of what might happen if I didn't manage survive long enough to scrape back my memories and remember who I was. I didn't have a reasonable coping mechanism in place for dealing with the kind of danger we were facing. I never had. So what had I done instead?

I'd taken out my fears on the people around me. I'd verbally pushed away people who might be able to help me, all because I was frightened and didn't know how to deal with it.

I felt like an idiot. But more than anything, I just felt exhausted.

Finally, Aragorn rose from where he too had been staring out into the storm in complete tired stillness. He didn't speak for a long moment, but when he did, the unexpected gentleness of it cut through the silence like a knife.

"Do not allow your pride to make enemies where there should be allies." He said quietly, and then turned to go and wake Gimli for the next watch.

I went to sleep feeling cold that night. Cold and exhausted, and unsure of whether I felt more homesick for London or Rivendell anymore.

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><p><strong>Transaltions:<strong>

*** **_"Sleep Caradhras, be still, lie still, hold your wrath!" _(Sindarin)

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><p><strong>AN: Like? No like? I know this one was a bit short; but it's in preparation for the next one, which _will_ be much longer. Let me know you're thoughts y'all. Or if you liked it but can't think of anything to say, just stick a 3 in review box. :) See you next chapter!**


	12. Part II : Chapter 11

**13 / 03 /15 ~ In which Eleanor acts her age, instead of her shoe size.**

**Disclaimer:** _"The Lord of the Rings" is the property of J. R. R. Tolkien. I only claim ownership over Eleanor Dace and the subsequent plot of her story._

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><p><strong>AN: Anonymous (aka. the person who left me an incredible 1719 word review! Which unfortunately I had to take down; not because it was offensive, but because it was an essay all on it's own!): **You, dear anonymous reader, knocked me sideways with your review — and in a very, _very _good way. I was not expecting to wake up, open my emails and see I'd got a review that long. Nor was I expecting it to be so detailed and so well considered. Honestly, I didn't think of your review as a flame at all. You left me with a wonderful and rare balance of praise, and _very_ thoughtful critique that made me think hard about what I had written, and what I'm going to write from here on out. It was immensely helpful (seriously, I was taking bullet points.) I concede the last chapter left a bad taste in both our mouths. I had a hard time writing it for the same reasons you had reading it — getting character interactions and progression to give the intended feel is really difficult.

Anyway, I just really wish you hadn't reviewed anonymously, so I could know which one of my readers gives such brilliant feedback! Thank you so much whoever you are! I do hope this next chapter picks up the slack from last one, and you continue to enjoy the story! :)

**Charlottees: **Thank you very much! I also find 1st person OCs a little abrasive sometimes, but for Eleanor's story it seemed the best option — since so much of her subplot with Tink is going on entirely inside her head. I'm glad you think its working out though. Hope you enjoy the update!

**LittleApollyon: **Wonderful, because this next chapter is quite a long one. Hope you enjoy. :)

**M. Margaret:** Lol, Aragorn II — stating the obvious since TA 2931. XD I'm glad you're enjoying the cryptic flashbacks, they're getting really fun to write the further we get into the story.

**Cokecolapandas: **Might well happen; he seems to be the favourite to win so far. I guess you'll have to keep reading to find out. :)

**Thranduil: **Brilliant to hear! Thank you very much for the support!

**Mariale-26: **Haha! So happy you liked the last update, and the "Prince Charming" quip was totally intended to be childish of her — we each have our weirdo coping mechanisms when it comes to fear and near-death experiences. Also really pleased the visions are having the desired effect of freaking you out! I think I might have to just watch P&P now — you've got me curious to see that scene!

**aqua-empress: **A fan of **_good_** Legomances you say? You have no idea how tempted I am to shout "challenge accepted!" XD Really pleased you loved the last chapter. Here's hoping you love this one just as much!

**I want to say a big thanks to everyone who's read and reviewed so far — your feedback has really kept my motivation high. Apologies this chapter took so long to post, but as you'll see; it's a long one, and it took me an awfully long time to get right. So read on, if the mood takes you, and I hope you enjoy!**

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><p><em><strong>Part II : Chapter 11<strong>_

- Disney Princes & Watery Monsters -

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><p>In my dream, we were sitting on swings, surrounded by bright white haze and tall pale trees.<p>

Tink and I sat in what looked like a familiar children's playground. Although it was strikingly realistic, I knew it wasn't real without having to think about it. No children were in sight, and everything from the climbing frames to the seesaws were all purest white. In fact, the only things I could see that weren't white where Tink and me. I didn't bother to look surprised either. I was getting almost used to the strange Salvador Dali-like scenes I found myself in whenever I fell asleep.

"Well, this is new." I said conversationally, kicking myself back on the swing. "It looks different here that usual."

_'I thought we could use a change of scenery.' _Tink said from the swing right next to mine, gently swaying back and forth. She was wearing white this time, her long hair in a loose braid, and she all but blended seamlessly into the ghostly white scenery all around us. She _was_ technically a part of my mind itself, so I guess just willing her surrounding to change shape whenever she felt like it came with the territory.

I spun myself around on my swing, the chains twisting together before spinning me back the way I'd come.

"And you chose…" I looked around as I spun to a stop, realising suddenly why everything looked so familiar, "My old primary school?"

_"It seemed appropriate, given your current state of mind."_

"And what is my current state of mind? Childish?"

_"No. But I would say you're exhausted almost to the point of senselessness."_

I snorted with repressed laughter.

"Well, I _am_ having a literal conversation with myself, sitting in a hallucination of a playground I used to hang out in when I was eight. Fair point."

I went back to my spinning, leaning back and looking up as the white treetops cartwheeled around us.

"I suppose you heard everything Aragorn said." I didn't bother to make it into a question.

_"I did." _Tink confirmed._"What of it?"_

I put my feet flat on the ground to stop my momentum, waiting for the world to stop twirling, and thinking about what had been said.

"Apparently I've been antagonistic with the others."

_"Antagonistic? You? Surely not!"_

"Wise-ass much?" I tried to sound irritated, but I couldn't make myself hold it for long. I felt the worry slip back into my expression. "I'm seriously though. We're going on a journey literally into the heart of hell, and Legolas and I can't even speak to each other with contemplating homicide. What if these issues we have do start becoming a problem?"

She pursed her lips in thought.

_"I guess the logical thing to do would be to do something to get them to start warming to you."_

"Warm to me? After everything that's happened so far? How in hypothetical hell would I even start getting someone like Legolas or Gimli to_ warm_ to me?"

_"Set them on fire? That could be fun." _Tink suggested, and I could hear her grin. I cringed and rolled my head back, almost ashamed that my own subconscious could come up with such a terrible one-liner.

"You've been waiting to use that one, haven't you?"

_"For months." _She confirmed, and grinned proudly at me. _"Wanna hear another one?"_

I gave her a flat look, and she threw up her hands in amused defeat.

_"Fine, fine! I yield to your disapproval, oh humourless one."_

I ignored her previous remark, and went back to staring out over the playground, swaying gently on the swing.

"Seriously though, what if he is right?" I asked quietly, genuine worry filling my voice. "Aragorn I mean. I don't think much of his teaching methods, but what he said wasn't wrong. What if I have just been digging myself a hole with them up till now?"

She shrugged her shoulders at me.

_"So what if you have? You could ask the 'what if' question until you stop breathing, boss. Everyone gets scared. Everyone deals with it differently. It's what you do with that fear that matters, now that you know it's there."_

I eyed her.

"Are you sure you're not just channelling Aragorn now, Tink?"

_"Well, you said it yourself; he isn't wrong." _She replied loftily, pushing herself back into the swing until her long dress swept the grass._"Though I agree, his teaching method leaves a lot to be desired."_

"Agreed." I kicked off the ground and leaned back into the swing, giving myself enough momentum to match hers. "Ok then, Ms. Id, you're the expert on the base part of my brain. What should I do now?"

She pursed her lips thoughtfully as we both continued to swing back and forth in time with each other.

_"I'd put that fear you're feeling to good use. Use it as a tool, instead of letting it use you."_

"And how am I supposed to do that exactly?"

_"No idea." _She said cheerily, _"But it sounded deep didn't it?"_

I groaned.

"You suck."

She grinned cheekily at me, that dimple we both shared in our left cheek appearing.

_"I guess you're just going to have to figure out the semantics as we go. I can't give you _**_all_**_ the answers."_

I smiled back at her, though I didn't really feel it reach my eyes and said, "So far you haven't given me **_any_** straight answers, Tink."

_"Touche."_

We both shared an identical chuckle, which might have been eerie if I wasn't so used to it by now. Tink slowed her swinging to a gentle sway and stared off at the misty playground. I followed her gaze to find her looking at the white version of the jungle-gym I'd learned to climb on as a kid.

_"You remember the last time we were here?" _She asked quietly. _"The time Katie learned to hang upside down on the monkey bars, and she tried to teach you, but—"_

"But I was too scared of falling on my head to try." I finished her sentence for her, the memory coming back clear as if it had happened last week, not sixteen years ago. "Katie called me a wimp for days. I remember."

_"Do you remember what you felt after?" _She asked.

I thought for a minute, reluctantly dragging the memory back up from all that time ago.

"Angry." I nodded slowly, recalling one of the few real fights I'd ever had with my best friend. "I was angry at myself, but I took it out on Katie. If I'd fallen, I could have really hurt myself… but I missed out on something special because I was too scared to even try…"

I trailed off as I thought about it even more. I thought I understood what Tink was getting at; showing me this manifestation of another point in my life where I'd let fear get the better of me. But I felt like there was more to it that she wasn't sharing. I looked sideways at her past the chain of my swing.

"…Why did you _really_ show me this, Tink?"

She didn't answer. She just smiled at me, and got off the swing.

She'd just begun to walk away when she stopped suddenly and turned to me, her white dress shifting even though the air was completely still.

_"You going to be ok here on your own for a bit?"_ She asked, ambers eyes watching me intently from the mirror image of my own face.

I looked around at the deserted memory of the old playground. I closed my eyes, inhaled the scent of the fallen leaves, silently pretending for just a moment that I was home again where it was safe. Where there were no wizards, elves, dwarves or perilous journeys through icy mountains to intrude.

"Yeah." I murmured quietly. "Just… let me have this. Just for a little while."

_"As you wish."_

**_~ / ~ / ~ / ~_**

I woke from the dream far more reluctantly than I had any other in a long time. Inside my head had been peaceful, and quite, and warm. The current land of the living was quiet, but not nearly as cosy. The fire had died some time in the night, and it was cold, though mercifully I wasn't damp anymore. It must have been very early morning because the sunlight hadn't grown past a watery glow when I opened my eyes.

I'd fallen asleep on the cold stone floor just a few feet from the hobbits and quietly snoring Boromir. My hip was digging painfully into the uneven rocks beneath me. I shifted my weight slightly to roll onto my back when I stopped, realising suddenly that I wasn't the only one awake. I could hear two men talking quietly not far off at the mouth of the cave.

Correction: one man, and one elf.

"… you are the only other I have heard of that was ever named Ward of Imladris. How did she come to be under Lord Elrond's protection?" I heard Legolas's voice. It was by far the most I'd heard him say in a single sentence since we'd left Rivendell. But what really caught my attention was the 'she' in that phrase. There was only one female Ward of Imladris that I knew of…

They were talking about me.

Unhealthy curiosity; thy name is Eleanor Lucy Dace. I lay still as I could, keeping my breathing even and pretending to still be sound asleep — and I listened.

"It's a… complicated story." Aragorn answered him with a small pause in between. I guessed he'd taken to his pipe again. "You could always ask her to tell you."

"I doubt she would answer me." Legolas said dully.

"She might, if you asked her nicely." The ranger chuckled. He said something else in elvish that was just a bit too quick and quiet for me to understand. I heard Legolas give an exasperated sigh, sitting back against the wall of the cave.

"She…" He made a half frustrated, half irritated noise. "She is not at all what I expected."

"What _were_ you expecting?" Aragorn asked.

"From the apprentice of Lord Elrond? Composure, humility, certainly more social grace."

I ground my teeth, the exhausted defeat left over from the night before giving way to bubbling anger. I was temped to roll over and demand what other traits his lordship thought I needed to keep him happy — but I forced myself to keep still, and keep listening.

It was Aragorn who surprised me with what he said next.

"You did not exactly present her with an iron-clad reason to respect you, mellon nin. And she is not the only one who would benefit from a little more humility." He paused again, and I could all but hear his smirk. "I find you are remarkably similar."

"I'm insolent?" Legolas all but spluttered.

"Proud, and stubborn," Aragorn clarified plainly, and I heard a dash of amusement slip into his tone, "And not suffering from an overabundance of manners."

I heard Legolas chuckle, and I realised it was the first time I'd ever heard him laugh. Another first.

"I suppose I have no right to argue with you on that, my friend." He agreed, though it was a tinged with a something that sounded like regret, "Though you too are in no position to cast stones."

Aragorn chortled quietly at that, but he didn't deny it either.

What felt like an amiable quiet fell on the cave between them, and I tried to resist the urge to move a little to the left. There was a pointy piece of root poking right into my ribs, making it very difficult to pull off my Sleeping Beauty impression. Finally Legolas broke the silence.

"Why do you defend and her so? Has she earned some kind of special treatment I was not made aware of?"

"Lord Elrond asked me to make certain she did not endanger herself during our journey." Aragorn replied, and then followed it up pointedly with; "You do not look convinced."

The elf was quiet for a moment before finally admitting, "I heard how you spoke to her last night."

My stomach squirmed in embarrassment. I'd already guessed he'd been listening the whole time — super-elf-hearing and all that — but I still didn't relish the idea of him hearing me getting schooled by Aragorn. That had been humiliating enough on its own.

Aragorn was silent for a long moment too, and I almost forgot to breathe waiting for his reaction.

"You object?" He asked.

"Not exactly." Legolas responded, taking the time to choose his words carefully. "I just wonder at your motive for speaking to her that way. I have never heard you so severe with anyone before. Even one as infuriating as she."

Again, I had to fight the urge to roll over and let him know exactly how infuriating I could be, and that he hadn't seen anything yet.

"She has seen little of the world outside Rivendell. I believe if she continued with this careless attitude towards the danger we face, she is likely to get herself killed. She needed to be shown that, before an enemy arrow or blade did the teaching instead."

"You truly believe that?"

Aragorn just grunted in reply and I heard him take a puff on his pipe. Another long silence stretched between them, and I was almost tempted to give up listening to them indirectly chastising me, and try to go back to sleep. Then Legolas said something that made me stop.

"If I didn't know better," He said quietly, and I had to strain my hearing to catch it, "I'd say that the reason you insist on being that severe with her, is because that _'carless attitude towards danger'_ of hers is not dissimilar to that of a young ranger's I once knew."

I stilled at that, my breathing slowing almost to a stop. Aragorn's quiet laugh was hollow, and I was certain that there had been more meaning behind it that I knew.

"Perhaps," He replied at last, and though I could hear his smile he sounded a bit sad saying it, "And look and see how he turned out because of it?"

Another silence, but I could hear the smile in Legolas's words when he finally answered.

"I do." He answered firmly. "I see a good man, and a friend."

**_~ / ~ / ~ / ~_**

The hike down from the mountains was uncomfortably quiet. Although they'd all slept like rocks, the hobbits were still feeling the effects of the long cold night before. No jaunty pub songs or crass toilet humour for us today. No one else had had the energy to start up anything more than polite niceties as we walked, Gandalf leading again while Aragorn lead Bill from the back.

For once, I didn't mind the silence. I didn't especially want to talk to anyone after the night I'd had, least of all Aragorn. Having had time to calm down, sleep on it, then eavesdrop on his conversation with Legolas; I'd found myself feeling conflicted about our one-sided talk during the first watch. I knew now what he was trying to get across by what he'd said to me; but that didn't change the fact that the way he'd gone about it had left me feeling demoralised, and a little hurt. I was in no mood for another 'lesson' any time soon.

As our path down the rocky foothills levelled out to flat, I found myself walking up beside Gimli. He had that big old war axe slung casually over one shoulder (the "back up" for the one shattered at the council meeting), and I tried not to feel intimidated. Short and comically hairy as the stout little man might be; I had little doubt he'd have no trouble cleaving a person in half with it, if he cared to.

I supposed the polite thing to have done would be open the conversation by thanking him for digging me out of the snow on Cradahras. I already knew he wasn't particularly fond of me, but instead I found myself saying something else that was playing on my mind…

"Gimli," I started, not really sure of the best way to talk to the dwarf in question. I decided to go with 'diplomatically blunt.' "You said your cousin is in Moria. Balin, right?"

Gimli looked momentarily surprised. Probably at the fact that I'd spoken to him at all, let alone asked a question so politely. He peered at me curiously through thick eyebrows.

"Aye, lass. What of it?"

"When was the last time you saw him?"

The grizzly redheaded dwarf looked momentarily wistful, and it instantly changed his appearance from intimidating to something warm, almost endearing. No mean feat, considering he had a sod-off huge war axe slung over his back.

"Not since he and a good number of my kin set out to reclaim Moria, over three decades ago. Last I heard they had reclaimed the Axe of Durin. A fine prize."

"So… you haven't actually heard from him recently then?"

Gimli eyed me dubiously through narrowed eyes.

"Are you getting to a point, lass?" He asked bluntly.

I bit my bottom lip nervously. I'd got an uneasy squirming feeling in my gut when he mentioned his cousin, but I had no idea why. I vaguely remembered that there was something about Moria that was bad news from the books, but for the life of me I couldn't remember what. Could it have been something to do with Balin? Or the other dwarves?

"I—."

I'm still not sure what I was planning on follow that with, but I didn't have to worry about it long. The next outcrop of rock we turned opened up onto a sight that left my jaw hanging slack.

Where the rough and rocky mountain side should have continued, it gave way to a gigantic and almost perfectly flat wall of stormy grey stone. It stretched off down the edge of the mountain side as far as I could see, and towered over the surrounding river over two hundred feet straight up. If we'd been on Earth, I'd have half expected to find myself staring up at a couple of popular American president's faces carved into it — Mount Rushmore style.

"The walls of Moria!" Gimli exclaimed in awe. If I hadn't been so impressed at the sight myself, I might have found it funny that a dwarf could be so enraptured at the sight of his own people's architecture.

We picked our way over the river until we came right up to a narrow path, sandwiched between the towering stone walls and the dark lake the river ran into.

"Dwarf doors are almost invisible when closed." Gimli explained to me with a dash of pride in his voice, wrapping the blade of his axe against the stone to emphasis the point.

"Yes, so much so that even their own masters cannot find them, if their secrets are forgotten." Gandalf added knowledgeably.

"Why doesn't that surprise me?" I heard Legolas say quietly, just loud enough for both Gimli and I to hear him.

I tried not to roll my eyes. Really I did. Gimli saw the look on my face, and I could swear I spotted a tiny smile crease the corners of his eyes.

Gandalf led us down the lakeside path, running his hand along the cliffside until finally he came to a stop between two gnarled looking trees. He felt around some more, muttering to himself; his fingers finding grooves in the stone that I wouldn't have been able to spot even with my funky elvish eye-sight. He continued to mumble incoherently, then suddenly looked up at the sky. I didn't understand what he was waiting for, until a cloud parted and allowed the half moon to shine directly onto the cliffside.

An archway, beautifully wrought and almost twice as tall as me, appeared the second the moonlight hit the stone. It's edges, instead of appearing as carved stone, glowed with pale light as if they'd been carved out of the cliffside with a star. As the lines and edges grew clearer, I could see writing appearing across the top of the arch, interlaced with the spiralling patterns.

With a surge of excitement that they were written in Tengwar script! I could read them!

_'Ennyn Durin, Aran Moria. Pedo mellon a Minno. Im Narvi hain echant. Celebrimbor o Eregion tethant I thiw hin.'_

I found myself silently mouthing the ancient elvish words as Gandalf read them aloud in the common tongue to the others, indicating with his staff as he went.

"It reads, 'The door of Durin, Lord of Moria. Speak, friend, and enter. I Narvi made them. Celebrimbor of Hollin drew these signs.' "

I stifled a chuckle at the last part of the translation. Beautiful as the famous elven smith's work was; that last part of that inscription sounded very much like a flowery elvish version of: "Narvi and Celebrimbor were here."

"What do you suppose that means?" Merry asked interestedly.

"Oh, it's quite simple. If you are a friend, speak the password and the doors will open." Gandalf said confidently, raising his staff and aiming the end at the centre of the door. "_Annon edhellen, edro hi ammen!_**_*_** "

Nothing happened.

Gandalf paused in surprise for a second, staring at the door. He tried again, raising both arms dramatically up in the air.

"_Fennas nogothrim, lasto beth lammen!_**_* _**" He called loudly.

Again, nothing. This was starting to seem a little silly.

Gandalf gave an annoyed sound, walked up to the archway and pushed against it with his shoulder. He might as well have been trying to push the mountain itself.

"I once knew all the spells in all the tongues of elves and orcs." He muttered irritably, more to himself than any of us.

"What are you going to do then?" Pippin piped up, and the old wizard whirled on him.

"Knock your head against these doors, Perrigrin Took!" He barked, and Pippin and I both flinched. "And if that does not work, and I am permitted a little peace from foolish questions, I will try opening words."

Something about wizards being "subtle" and "quick to anger" stirred in my memory, and I was glad I'd chosen to keep my mouth shut this time. Poor Pippin looked thoroughly taken aback, and mumbled something about getting campfire going. I decided to help him out — no reason we had to sit around getting cold while we waited for Gandalf to crack the lock on the door. I just hoped he figured it out soon, before he decided to just blast it open in a fit of frustration.

Pippin gave me an appreciative smile as I helped him and Merry scrounge up enough dry wood to get a small fire going, and get Sam's small kettle boiling over it. Tea — in my humble opinion — solves most of life problems, if served at the right time and in the right quantities. Grouchy wizards, surly rangers and homesick hobbits were no exception.

"The Mines are no place for a pony, even one so brave as Bill." I heard Aragorn telling Sam quietly as I brewed the tea. I turned to see the larger hobbit sadly stroking the old horses's mane while Aragorn unbridles and unsaddled him. Finally he steered Bill in the opposite direction and gave him a light pat of encouragement to get him moving. Sam bade the faithful pony a quiet farewell and reluctantly let him go. "Don't worry, Sam. He knows the way home."

I felt a bit sad myself watching them — I knew Sam had grown very fond of the pony in the few weeks we'd been traveling. I'd opened my mouth to try and say something reassuring, but the words died on my lips. I could feel a pair of eyes burning into the back of my neck, and I turned to find Legolas leaning against the wall of the cliff just a stone's throw away. He was very deliberately looking anywhere but at me.

I frowned and turned back to the kettle which had started whistling.

"Is there mud on my face? Something stuck in my hair?" I asked quietly. Merry gave me a quizzical look from over the campfire.

"No. Why do you ask?"

"Every time I look away, I can feel Prince Charming over there eyeballing the back of my head."

"Maybe he just likes the shape of your ears." Pippin suggested unhelpfully, his lip stretching into his usual playful smile. "They're very pretty ears."

I raised an eyebrow at him. "Thanks… I think."

I was about to start pouring the tea when something else out of the corner of my eye moved. Out over the lake.

I whipped my head around to look, but saw nothing. I was sure I'd just seen the water move. Except that wasn't possible. There was no wind to make even the smallest ripples, and the small lake should have been far too cold for fish…

The memory hit me like a slap in the face.

_'The Watcher in the Water!'_

I mentally smacked myself on the forehead. I couldn't believe I'd only _just_ remembered now. Oh it wasn't like it was important or anything. Only that there was a sod-off giant river monster hiding in the lake waiting to attack us when we weren't looking.

Nope, nothing serious at all.

Bloody hell, I needed to warn the other before it spotted us and we all ended up getting dragged into a premature and very damp grave.

I opened my mouth to speak, but the second I did it was as if all the air had been pulled from my lungs. My throat closed over the warning I'd been about to shout, and I choked on a wheezing breath. My eye widened and my hand went to my throat. Merry and Pippin looked up in alarm, but I couldn't speak. I tried again, and this time my tongue fused itself like quick-dry superglue to the roof of my mouth. I hunched over on my knees and started coughing violently trying to dislodge it. Boromir came over and gave me a few gentle slaps on the back as I hunched over.

Finally after about a minute of coughing, I managed to choke out a wheezy 'thank you'.

"You alright, lass?" Gimli called over at me gruffly.

"Yeah," I rasped. "Just… forgot to breathe."

Gimli, Boromir and Aragorn all gave me identical thoroughly unconvinced looks, but I ignored them all. What answer could I give them? I had no sodding idea what just happened. Every time I'd so much as drawn breath to try say something about the river monster, I'd started choking on my own tongue.

"I'm going to go… check the supplies…" I said, my voice still a little rough and croaky.

"Perhaps I should help you." Boromir offered, setting his shield down by where I'd abandoned the tea for Merry and Pippin to deal with. I shook my head hurriedly.

"No, no, that's ok. I've got it."

It was only half a lie.

I did have every intention of checking the supplies. What I wanted more was a chance to sit, get my breath back, and think about what the hell had just happened to me — preferably without any ruggedly handsome men distracting me with their chivalry. Plus, something about what Gimli had said earlier still bothering me, but I'd been practically wringing out my brain trying to remember why.

I scuttled off towards where Aragorn had set down the packs and satchels that Bill had been carrying. I studiously ignored the curious eyes I could feel on the back of my head and began going through each bag, taking inventory of what we had left. It was very similar to the work I'd used to do for the apothecary back in Rivendell, and much less complicated. It only took me five minutes. After going through our food provisions, I decided to check my own medicinal supplies while I was at it; just to keep my hands busy while I thought.

Seven small throwing daggers; five rolls of bandages; two medical satchels with assorted tools; one hunting knife (slightly used with a crudely engraved hilt); and a partridge in a pear tree…

I found myself staring vacantly down at my equipment after a minute. I'd sorted through them three times, checked everything was clean and sharp, and I was _still_ drawing a mental blank. I couldn't think of any explanation as to what had just happened. All I'd done was try and warn them of what was in the lake. Of potential danger.

Could it be some kind of weird unspoken law of bring dropped into a parallel universe?

_'Thou shalt not give away plot twists to the original canon characters?'_

Then it dawned on me.

It wasn't that I'd been about to warn them of impending danger. I'd been about to warn them of something that I shouldn't have even _known was there_. The only reason I did know was because I'd already read this part of the story back on Earth. It was hazy and vague, but I remembered it well enough to know the attack was going to happen. I knew what was lurking beneath the water. But the others didn't.

Whatever invisible force it that was keeping me from speaking, it seemed intent on not letting me give away to the Fellowship what was going to happen. And there was only one invisible force resident in my head that knew what I knew…

_'Can't let you do that, boss.' _Tink's voice rang through my mind, as if she'd been waiting for me to think it.

_'Tink?! That was you? You did that choking thing to me? Why?!'_

_'Because of what you were about to say.' _She replied calmly, impervious to my outrage, however silent. _'You were about to tell the others about the Watcher in the Water. You can _**_not_**_ do that.'_

_'And why the hell not? I can't just sit here in silence knowing what's going to happen!' _I fired back inside my head.

_'We can, and we will.'_

I just sat there for a moment, stunned. Whatever Tink was — my subconscious; my id; the personification of my basic primal brain — I had no idea she was capable of doing anything like _that_. In the two years I'd had her living inside my head, she'd never done anything like this before. The idea that she could spontaneously cut off my airway, or make me choke on my on tongue, was unsettling to say the least.

Then again, I was reasonably sure she wouldn't be in a hurry to try it again. If she did, she'd essentially be choking herself too.

_'There'd better be a damn good reason why you did that.' _I snapped, still angry and very freaked out. _'You're _**_my_**_ subconscious for God sake!'_

_'I'm also your survival instinct.' _Tink answered, still frustratingly calm, but I could hear the irritation creeping into her voice._ 'It's my job to stop doing something that's potentially going to get us dead.'_

I felt myself frown at that, and my stomach did a nervous little roll.

_'Dead?'_

_'Possibly mauled. At this point it could go either way.' _She said conversationally, paused, and then added. '_Besides, you'd totally be ruining the plot if you gave it away now.'_

_'So you're not only my internal babysitter, but also a spoiler nazi now? Wonderful.' _I grumbled. I turned to look very slightly over my shoulder to look at the others. Gandalf was still muttering incantations at the door, while Boromir, Aragorn, Gimli and the hobbits sat patiently near the fire. I noticed the tea I'd made hadn't gone unappreciated.

_'Why?' _I silently asked. '_Why interfere now?'_

Tink chose her words with obvious care before she answered me.

_'Lets just say that some things you're _**_supposed_**_ to learn the hard way. Just, not so hard that you end up killing yourself doing it.'_

I was about to tell her that I'd had more than enough unhelpful riddles for one day, when a shadow fell over my hand in the moonlight. I came one muscle spasm away from drawing my hunting knife, but I controlled myself just in time.

"Jesus, don't do that!" I let out a shaky breath of relief at seeing it was only Legolas. He looked different in the dark. The moonlight had turned his long hair from gold to silver, and his handsome face looked less imposing now than it did in direct sunlight. Or maybe that was just because for once he wasn't scowling at me. His blue-grey eyes were still just as sharp and unsettling as ever, but his frown was one of confusion instead of irritation.

"Do what?" He asked me.

"Sneak up on me like that!" I told him shortly, very deliberately putting my sheathed hunting knife back on the ground next to me.

"I wasn't attempting to sneak up on you." He insisted, the faintly irritated tone I was used to hearing from him creeping in. I ignored it, busying myself with the fiddly process of putting my knife pouch back onto my belt.

"Well, you managed it anyway. Congratulations."

I fastened the last buckle and turned to look over at where he'd sat himself down crosslegged on a nearby stone, his bow resting across his lap.

"So why are you here?" I asked.

"You shouldn't wander too far on your own, especially here." He stated plainly, then paused, tilting his head to the side in thought. "I was also curious to know why you've been less… talkative than usual."

_'Smooth save there, Prince Charming. You were going to say "obnoxious" weren't you?' _Tink commented smugly. I slammed the metaphorical door on her. For my own good or not, I was still really pissed about what she'd done to me earlier.

"Well, I've got a bit on my mind than usual." I told Legolas irritably, turning away again. Then I stopped, and just for a moment thought back to my conversation with Aragorn. I looked over my shoulder at him; paused, then added more amiably; "More than Pippin's raunchy pub ballads anyway."

A minuscule, tiny twitch tugged at the corner of the other elf's mouth. If I'd blinked I might have missed it — but it was there.

"Clearly." He said, his hardened tone softening just a little bit. I saw his gaze flicker down my right shoulder. He was silent for a moment with an uncomfortable expression creeping into his eyes. "How is your arm?"

"What?"

"Your arm." He repeated stiffly, as if he were embarrassed for even mentioning it.

That caught me off guard. Why did he suddenly care about my arm? He hadn't seemed remotely interested in my continued existence the day before. Now he was asking after my well-being, like some family friend over for Sunday lunch?

I looked down at the limb in question and then back up at him suspiciously.

"Its fine. Just a bit bruised."

He nodded and looked away for a moment. The silence stretching between us was just becoming uncomfortable when he broke it with another question.

"May I ask you something?"

"I suppose so…" I said slowly, both curious and slightly nervous.

"Elves only sleep as Men do when we are deeply wounded or ailing from some unseen sickness." He told me seriously, giving me a pensive look that made me feel a little uncomfortable about what was coming next.

"I'm pretty sure that was a statement. What's your question?" I pressed, and he watched my expression closely.

"You are neither wounded nor poisoned, and yet you sleep. Why?"

Urgh. As far as questions went, that one was a doozie. Sometimes I completely forgot that I was an elf now. A lot of the things I said and did as a human Londoner just didn't match what I was supposed to be here in Arda. Among many things, my sleeping pattern had been the biggest noticeable difference between me and the other elves of Rivendell. I'd learned from Lord Elrond that most elves rested their minds and bodies separately — one going about its usual business while the other took a break. Very rarely did they ever fall into a sleep deep enough to dream. Not like I did.

I'd experimented with it a bit during my two years training, but the most I'd managed to go without slipping into sleep deprived psychosis was about six days. Of course, there was no way I was going to try and explain all that to Legolas — no matter how creepy-unexpected-polite he was suddenly being to me.

"I… ur…" I thought for a second. I'd always been terrible at lying, but hell, it was worth a shot. "I was dropped on my head as a child?"

Legolas gave me the most masterful deadpan look I'd ever seen in my life. He arched one eyebrow at me, and I made disgusted noise, throwing up my hands in defeat.

"Alright, fine. I have no idea why. I get tried, I sleep. Is that so terrible?"

He shrugged, and turned away to look out over the lake.

"I suppose not. I was merely curious."

Another uncomfortably potent silence stretched between us. Occasionally it was broken by the sounds of hobbits talking quietly around the fire, or Gandalf's frustrated grumbling at the riddle on the door.

I peered at Legolas in thought after a little while. He looked content to leave me to my sorting, and it probably would have been the sensible thing to just leave the conversation at that. After all, for once we'd ended on a good note, sort of. Really it was the first time we'd ever managed to speak to each other civilly for more than five minutes. That was an achievement all on its own.

But I just couldn't leave it alone.

If there was anything Aragorn had shown me via his reprimanding speech last night; it was that the one thing I hated more than being talked down to, was a double standard. If I was going to be made to eat my badly chosen words from the past few weeks, then so was he.

I swallowed the last of my pride and turned back to face the other elf in the dark.

"Look, Legolas. How I spoke to you at the Council meeting was disrespectful, and said out of frustration. I apologise for that. It won't happen again."

I said it fast, like ripping of a bandaid. The blond elf turned to look at me, his expression more than little bit shocked. He opened his mouth to speak, but I cut over him before he could get a word out.

"What I _wont_ apologise for, is everything that's happened between us since. I'm not the only one here who's behaved badly. Whatever it is I said or did to offend you enough to treat me like you have, the least you could do is tell me, so we can both get over it."

That _really_ caught him off guard.

Rebuff? Scorn? That I was expecting. I hadn't expected to surprise him so much that he just stared blankly at me, his grey eyes fixed on mine. From the look on his face, I was pretty sure I'd struck something I hadn't intended to with those words.

"There, big dramatic speech over. Feel free to chip in any time now." I muttered uncomfortably, eyeing him for a reaction other than an unsettling grey-blue stare.

He looked at me uncertainly and opened his mouth to speak. Then he hesitated, as if uncertain of how he was supposed to respond.

"I… must admit, I find your behaviour and speech baffling." He finally said slowly after a very long moment of almost painful silence. I heaved a silent sigh of relief. At least he wasn't scowling at me anymore.

"You wouldn't be the first to say so." I agreed, but didn't miss that he was deliberately evading my point. "But that's not an answer. Merry and Pippin are baffling too, and you've treat them just fine."

He sighed through a tiny frustrated noise, but where I expected to see annoyance in his face I just saw discomfort.

"You do not conduct yourself as most ellith I've known. After what happened at Lord Elrond's council, I found myself unsure of how to handle you. Also, it has been a long time since I've witnessed anyone give such an… unconventionally first impression." He explained, and I noticed that the tense line of his shoulders had relaxed. Also, the hand he's been gripping his bow with had relaxed. Had he really been that angry? Or, nervous…?

Nah.

"I think the word you were searching for there was 'memorable'. I gave a _memorable_ first impression." I corrected him, unable to hold back a smug little grin.

Shockingly, he actually smiled at that. I decided right there that I preferred his smile a lot more than his glare.

"True." He agreed, and then paused to look thoughtfully at me. "I will concede that I too have not conducted myself as I should have. It was not my place to treat Lord Elrond's apprentice with such disrespect simply because you're…"

He trailed off, and I tilted my head to the side expectantly.

"I'm a girl?" I offered. He looked uncomfortable again.

"Partly, yes."

"Its fine. You were half right at least. I _am_ pretty terrible at fighting." I gave him what I hoped was a pointed look. "But just because I'm female doesn't automatically make me a liability."

"So I've seen." He said more amiably, but not quite losing the uncomfortable expression on his face. "There is little I can offer for my behaviour, other than my apologies."

"Well, since I can't offer much more, I guess that makes us even." I replied, a small pleased smile appearing my face which he returned.

"Then I hope you can forgive my treatment of you."

I chuckled, "Now you look _and_ talk like a Disney prince. How can I say no? "

He gave me a confused but not displeased look.

"I don't understand. Is this a good thing?"

I decided not to answer him. I just chuckled at the baffled look on his face, smiling to myself like the loon that he probably still thought I was. I put the last of my things away, and started getting to my feet again.

"So how about it, Prince Charming? Think we can tolerate each other and our 'baffling ways' until we reach Mordor?" I grinned. Just because we'd agreed to be civil didn't mean I was going to let him off the hook completely.

Legolas gave me a gimlet look at the sound of his designated nickname, but I saw the corner of his mouth twitch, just a little.

"I think we can certainly _try_." He said graciously, climbing gracefully to his feet and offering me his hand, just like before. I let him pull me completely to my feet, and this time it didn't feel forced to accept his help. I knew we hadn't come close to patching up all our issues, but it was certainly a start. And a hell of a lot more than I'd dared hope for.

A splash from the lake set my heart to racing in sudden panic.

I whipped around, only to see Merry and Pippin throwing pebbles into the water, trying to get them to skip. My stomach dropped and I went to shout at them to stop, catching myself when I remembered what had happened when I tried that earlier.

If I did that, I'd likely just end up unable to breath again.

I made a frustrated noise, and Legolas looked at me in confusion. Aragorn heard it too, looking up just in time to see the panic on my face directed at the hobbits. Thank God _he_ had no weird choke-on-your-own-tongue curse to stop him doing something about it. Merry had just picked up another stone and was about to throw it when Aragorn came up behind him and caught his wrist.

"Do not disturb the water." He said quietly but sternly.

A clatter drew everyone's attention as Gandalf let his staff drop to the ground in frustration, taking a seat on a nearby stone in defeat at the still sealed door. Frodo rose in his place, looking up at the writing on the archway with a pensive look. His eyes widened in realisation.

"It's a riddle!" He cried suddenly, looking hard up at the ancient inscription. I held my breath, crossing my fingers and hoping he'd finally got it. I knew we likely didn't have much time left.

"_'Speak, friend, and enter.'_ What's the Elvish word for friend?"

Everyone's attention was on Frodo and the door. Which meant no one but me was looking at the lake. Larger ripples had started to move surface of the water…

_'Come on, come on, come on!'_

"_Mellon._" Gandalf said clearly, the elvish rolling off his tongue.

The walls of Moria answered with the penetrating sound of stone cracking open, and the carved doors began to swing slowly outwards of their own accord. Gandalf gave a triumphant rumbling laugh, as everyone started getting to their feet to follow. He patted Frodo on the back as he passed, leading the way into the fully open doorway to the dwarven halls. I followed in quickly after them, just a step behind Legolas and Aragorn.

It was very nearly pitch black inside. I could barely see a thing. But it was the smell that hit me like the crest of a wave.

Dust, damp, must, and something else. Sickly sweet and sour, like spoiled milk and burned meat.

I wrinkled my nose in the gloom, but none of the others seemed to have noticed as they followed Gandalf further inside. All except for Legolas. He had the same repulsed expression as me, only it was accompanied by weary alertness, one hand clutching his bow at the ready. He looked over at me, and for a weird second we shared a look of mutual worry.

Something about this really wasn't right, and it was unsettling us both.

"Soon, master elf, you will enjoy the fabled hospitality of the dwarves; roaring fires, malt beer, red meat off the bone!" Gimli's voice entered merrily through the gloom, just a little ahead of us. "This, lass, is the home of my cousin, Balin. And they call it a Mine. _A Mine._"

He snorted in amusement, just as Gandalf breathed light into the crystal on his staff.

The hallway was instantly illuminated, and with a jolt of horror, I saw what had caused the fowl smell.

"This is no mine." Boromir breathed, coming up behind me. "It's a tomb."

Bodies were everywhere. Desiccated, butchered and rotting away; they were everywhere. They littered the crumbling stair case, the cracked floor, some were even pinned to the walls and pillars with arrows and broken blades. Some were still just recognisable as dwarves, while others were so mangled or burned that it was impossible to tell.

I took an instinctive step backwards in fear, stumbling back into Boromir. He caught me by my bruised arm and steadied me, but I hardly noticed the pain. Something crackled under my foot.

"Eleanor, don't…" Boromir warned me just a little too late.

I looked down to see the crunching sound under my boot had come from a dead dwarf's finger bones, still clutching a blade in a shrivelled hand. I almost threw up.

"No, no…!" Gimli groaned in dread, looking around at the bodies. He rushed over to one and clearly recognised the armour and weapons on the dead dwarves bodies. "No!"

Legolas of the cast-iron stomach, reached down and pulled an arrow out of one corpse's skulls, took one look at it and blanched.

"Goblins!" He said, and it was the first time I'd ever heard him truly panicked. He threw the arrow aside and reached for his own arrows, just as Boromir and Aragorn also armed themselves too.

"We'll make for the Gap of Rohan. We should never have come here!" Boromir insisted firmly and fearfully, taking my shoulder and pulling me back firmly towards the door. My mind and body froze, unable to decide which I should be more afraid of — the monster I knew was lurking in the lake outside, or whatever was hiding in the mountain that had killed all these dwarves?

Turns out, I didn't need to decide.

It all happened much faster than I'd imagined it would. One minute Boromir was shouting at us all to get out. The next, Frodo was screaming, and all the hobbits were yelling.

All of us whirled to see the long grey-green tentacle-like arm, like that of an obscenely oversized octopus, had reached out of the lake behind us and had grabbed Frodo by the ankle. It was trying to drag him into the dark water. Merry and Pippin had grabbed Frodo by his arms and were trying to pull him back, while Sam hacked viciously at the slimy tentacle with his short sword.

With a muffled shriek of pain, the monster beneath the lake released Frodo. But not even a second later, the one arm Sam had managed to fend off with his blade was replaced with an explosion of a dozen more, all of them shooting out of the water straight towards us.

The hobbits were swatted backwards off their feet with one swipe from an arm as thick as a tree trunk, while another seized Frodo by the leg and pulled him down. I shouted his name in panic, lunging back through the door and falling onto my front, trying to grab his hand before he was dragged under. I caught him, but our fingers slipped, and he was pulled up and into the air above the lake, shrieking in terror. I scrambled back to my feet as Boromir and Aragorn rushed past me into the water, swords drawn and going straight for the base of the monster's arms.

Legolas's bow appeared to my left, an arrow already fired and spinning through the air to land with an audible thunk in the arm still holding Frodo upside down. It loosened its grip just enough to let its hold on him slide from Frodo's leg to his ankle. But it didn't drop him. Aragorn and Boromir had managed to hack and slash their way through a forest of gross flailing limbs to just under where Frodo was still dangling.

I cursed aloud. I couldn't just stand there, but there was nothing I could think of to help. I didn't have anything other than my hunting dagger and throwing knives, none of which would have even made a dent in the thing's hide.

Frodo screamed again, and the black waters of the lake parted to reveal the Watcher's head.

It was huge. Huge and hideously ugly, like that bastard child of an octopus and an ocean going sci-fi alien. Two massive black eyes and a gaping maw of a mouth, opened up; and for a moment, I thought Frodo was going to end up as fish food.

But Aragorn saved him just in time, cleaving straight through the limb clutching Frodo with his sword. Frodo dropped with a cry of panic, but Boromir was already there and ready to catch him.

"In to the Mines!" Gandalf shouted at us all, pulling Pippin back onto his feet by the scruff of his cloak. Aragorn and Boromir were sprinting towards us through the water, but the Watcher had recovered and was right behind them.

I dashed forward and pulled a still dazed Merry and Sam up off the bank, tugging them backwards towards the stone doors. Something whistled past my left ear, and thunking straight into one of the creatures arms. I looked up to see it had been just a foot away from latching itself around my neck, before an arrow had stapled it into another larger arm right behind it. The creature howled in fury.

Gandalf was still shouting at us to get into the caves. I ground my teeth and all but shoved Merry and Sam in ahead of me. Another huge arm slammed into the arch above our heads, cracking and breaking the stone until it couldn't support its own weight. Aragorn, Boromir and Frodo all dived through the entrance at the last second, just as the beautifully carved gates of Moria collapsed with a thundering crash behind us, sealing us in.

Pitch blackness engulfed us.

For a moment I totally lost myself.

Since becoming an elf and becoming used to the sharpened senses that came with it, I'd _never_ found myself unable to see. I'd never found myself in such complete and absolute darkness. I didn't make a sound, but internally I was gibbering. Frantically, I felt around on the stone floor in front of me, afraid that if I didn't find something,_ any_ kind of proof that I wasn't the only one still alive in there, I'd start screaming.

My fingers closed over warm hand in the dark, and I gripped it tight.

Dim light suddenly illuminated the half collapsed entranceway from the tip of Gandalf's staff. It was weak, but more than enough for us all to see. I squinted around in the gloom and did a silent head count.

One wizard, four hobbits, two men, two elves, one dwarf.

I gasped out the breath of relief I didn't realised I'd been holding in. Everyone was ok. Bruised and shell shocked, but ok.

Finally I allowed myself to look down and see who's hand I'd found in the dark.

Boromir.

He was covered in dust and soaked from traipsing through the lake, but he instead of shock and fear in his blue eyes, there was grim determination. He'd obviously seen the fear in my face though, because he quickly gave me a reassuring smile, and my hand a gentle squeeze, before helping me gently to my feet again. My legs were still a little wobbly, so he graciously kept a hand near my elbow just in case I toppled over.

I don't know why or even how I noticed, but for a split second I saw Legolas's gaze flicker between my hand and Boromir's, before swiftly turning his face away.

"We now have but one choice. We must face the long dark of Moria." Gandalf's voice rang through stone hall, throwing back the gloom as he breathed a little more light into the crystal on his staff. "Be on your guard. There are older and fouler things than Orcs in the deep places of the world. It's a four day journey to the other side. Let us hope that our presence will go unnoticed."

He began walking in the direction of the ruined stone steps, and the hobbits all scrambled to follow closely behind him, followed by Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas. Boromir gestured for me to walk ahead of him, and I gratefully obliged.

We might have survived the Watcher in the Water, but I didn't want to even contemplate the idea of becoming lost in this place — with whatever it was I knew was waiting for us inside.

* * *

><p><strong>Translations:<strong>

* "Gate of the Elves, open now for us!" (Sindarin)

** "Doorway of the Dwarf-folk, listen to the word of my tongue!" (Sindarin)

* * *

><p><strong>AN: I'm sure you know the drill by now. ;) I love your feedback, but not as much as I love the fact that you read this far. Hope you enjoyed! See you next chapter!**


	13. Part II : Chapter 12

**26 / 03 /15 ~ In which Eleanor tells a nursery tale to nine adult men.**

**Disclaimer:** _"The Lord of the Rings" is the property of J. R. R. Tolkien. I only claim ownership over Eleanor Dace and the subsequent plot of her story._

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><p><strong>AN: myharlequinromance321: **Lol, well if it wasn't a word before, it is now! :) Now I think I might just have to try and slip that in somewhere. It's such a compliment to hear you don't only like the story, but you are enjoying Eleanor herself as well. Thank you for such a lovely review (and adding the story to your community), and I really hope you continue to enjoy where the story goes!

**Trich: **You read all of it in one go? Wow! That's pretty flattering, especially if you think it was worth the 4 hours it took to get through it all. Hope you enjoy the double update! :D

**M. Margaret: **Argh! I won't lie, I've been _agonising_ over the Boromir decision for days now! I had a plan when I started writing this, but now it's like the story is taking on a life all on it's own. Either way, I have no intention of letting him slip into the 'evil guy of the Fellowship' stereotype. He's too much of a fascinating character for that.

Also, I'm _really_ glad you like Tink! She's got quite a big role in this story (but shhh, that comes later ;), so it means a lot to hear you're enjoying her. Making my readers laugh with my writing is such a joy, you have no idea! I'm so happy you've stuck with me this far! Hope you enjoy the update. :)

**Mariale-26: **Oh fear not, poor Eleanor and Legolas are nowhere near off the hook with me yet! I have many plans for them both. As for Boromir, I can kinda see that. Overly charming guys sometimes creep me out too. But some people I've met are just like that; reflexively chivalrous without realising it. I guess we'll see if there's an ulterior motive behind it or not later on. As always, thank you for the support! Enjoy the new chapter! :D

(Btw, I watched P&P 2005 and omg you were right, that scene does really make the film. Thank you for pointing it out!)

**Mistra Rose: **Ah, yes. How does the saying go? _"The road to Hell is paved with good intentions." _Things are going to get complicated fast if she can't find a way around that problem. XD I'm really glad you're enjoying the story. Hope you like the update.

**7doom: **Thank you! You too are awesome, dear reader! I hope you continue to enjoy!

**pixelerrante: **It is starting to look a bit like a triangle isn't it? XD Lothlorien is within sight! Just two or three more speed bumps to cross before they get there… _*cough*_Troll_*cough*_Goblins_*cough*_Balrog_*cough*_

**We've hit the 50 review benchmark ladies and gents! Thank you so much! **

**So to show my appreciation to all of you who've been lovely enough to contribute to the feedback: I'll be posting two new chapters rapid-fire this time round! This chapter will be posted today at about 1:00am this morning (UK time) and Chapter 13 will be up later tonight, so keep your eyes peeled. :)**

**Hope you enjoy reading, and once again, thank you! You are all very much adored, dear readers.**

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><p><strong><em>Part II : Chapter 12<em>**

- Stories In The Dark -

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><p>The biggest problem with wading through hallways full of decomposing corpses is the smell.<p>

Not the general horror-movie-grossness. Nor the occasional horrible crackle of the bones underfoot. Nor even the fact that in some places, we were having to literally clamber and climb over where they'd blocked the staircases. The smell was dense as smoke, and just refused to fade no matter how far or how long we walked.

_'I told you two days ago, boss. A little culumalda oil rubbed under the nose, and bam! Corpse smell gone!'_

I didn't respond. Not even to point out that culumalda oil — though it did have a lovely woody scent — when applied directly to the nose or mouth, had the nasty side effect of making you hallucinate about giant purple mushrooms.

Do _not_ ask me how I know that.

It might have been juvenile, and a bit futile, since Tink was privy to all but the deepest of my inner thoughts anyway. But I was still angry at what she'd done to me on the side of the lake. I'd refused to speak to her, or even acknowledge her, since we'd been sealed into Moria two and a half days ago.

_'You know, you're not going to be able to ignore me forever, boss.'_

For sheer contrary effect, I pretended not to have heard her, and mimed waving away a pesky fly that just wouldn't go away.

Petty? Me? Surely not.

It wasn't a good time to get into another argument with her though. We'd reached the lower levels of the actual mines of the Mines, and were having to pick our way across a lot of precarious bridges and narrow walkways. I wasn't fully convinced that the creaking wooden structures were strong enough to support us all at once, and Gandalf seemed to think likewise.

He'd ordered us to walk single file as he lead us through the dark — wizard, then Legolas, me, Gimli, Frodo, Sam, Boromir, Merry, Pippin, and finally Aragorn bringing up the rear.

I kept close behind the tall elf as we walked, almost close enough to feel the warmth radiating off him in the cold dank air of the abandoned caves. I didn't like the idea of anyone in the Fellowship thinking that I was scared, least of all Legolas (who I'd stumbled into a couple of times when Gandalf had abruptly stopped without warning). But I just couldn't convincingly hide the fact was. I felt a deep-seated, weirdly desperate longing to see the sky and stars again, and an inescapable dread at the thought of having to try and sleep down here for another night.

Legolas didn't comment, nor did he complain. Not even once. Not even when my nose collided with his shoulder for the fifth time in an hour. He was clearly just as uncomfortable under the mountain as me, though he was much better at hiding. I was just close enough to see that his shoulders had tensed up, the muscles of his back wound tight as violin strings under his hunting greens.

At one point, Gandalf lead us along a very rickety platform skirting the side of a stone wall, the other wise giving way to darkness. He slowed in his walking and ran his hand curiously along the stone. He turned back to us with a small smile made wry by the long hours of walking in the dark.

"The wealth of Moria is not in gold, or jewels," He told us, as if we were on some kind of bizarre tour and he was our guide, "But mirthril."

He held out his staff over the edge of the platform, and poured more light into the crystal set on the tip. All the others curiously peered over the edge, and reluctantly, I looked too.

My breath came out in a rush.

"Oh, wow…"

Veins of beautiful bright metal ran like silver streams down through the stone walls of the mine, reflecting the light of the wizard's staff like mirrors illuminating the huge chasm far below us.

It was stunningly beautiful. And it was a very, _very_ long way down.

I leaned forward and peered over to get a better look, and trying not to think about how long you'd have to fall before finally reaching the bottom. A firm but gentle hand appeared unexpectedly on my arm. I looked to find Legolas gently but firmly holding me back, as if he was expecting me to suddenly pitch myself forwards over the edge. His hold on my arm was a lot more gentle than last time — so carful in fact, you'd hardly guess his grip was strong enough to leave deep finger shaped bruises.

But the moment I'd met his eye, he let go and turned away.

"Bilbo had a set of mithril rings that Thorin gave him." Gandalf told us, continuing to lead us along the rickety platform, and cutting off my confused look at the other elf.

"That was a kingly gift!" Gimli sounded impressed from right behind me. He had good reason to. From what I gathered, mithril was pretty much the platinum of Middle Earth — only x10 in terms of rarity and value.

"I never told him, but it's worth was greater than that of the Shire." Gandalf chuckled, as if it were a secret joke.

We continued on for several more hours, coming to a worryingly steep set of stairs — most of which had been reduced to nothing but rubble and smashed rock. We had to climb slowly to avoid slipping and falling on the loose stones. They were also covered in — yep, you guessed it — even more corpses. It probably wasn't a good sign that by that point, I was almost getting used to the sight of the desiccated bodies, if not the smell.

When we finally reached the top, the once smooth stone platform opened up onto three identical doorways, each leading off in opposing directions. One lead up another long staircase, while the other two lead down into murky darkness.

Gandalf halted before the three arching entrances, saying nothing, and looking from one to the other very slowly.

"I have no memory of this place." He finally murmured after a long silence, and he sounded troubled by the fact.

That was the only thing he'd said in the past two hours. Two hours which he'd spent sitting away from the rest of us, perched on some craggy rocks facing the three doors. His frown was so deep his thick grey eyebrows had almost joined in the middle. No one had dared ask him what he was doing this time, especially not Pippin.

The others of the company were busying themselves sitting around, and trying to wait as patiently as possible for Gandalf to have his inevitable epiphany. Smoking seemed to be the favoured pastime of the day. Merry, Pippin, Aragorn, and even Boromir all had their pipes out, smoking like chimneys. I'd sat far enough away that the smell wasn't too overpowering, but there was still a faint cloud forming above them after the first hour.

Gimli was swigging what smelled like whiskey, from a hip flask he'd drawn from I knew not where.

I couldn't blame him though. I think all of us could have done with a stiff drink at this point. And none of the rest of us were having to deal with the unspoken question of what had become of Balin in this horrible place. There were a hell of a lot of dwarf corpses down there in the tunnels. But so far they had all looked like foot-soldiers. Gimli had said his cousin was one of the dwarf lords who led the recolonisation of Moria decades ago. Surely if he was still here, he wouldn't have been lost among the hundreds of bodies we'd passed to get this far.

By the second hour, the silence was getting uncomfortably heavy, and Gandalf still hadn't said a word.

I decided to at least make an attempt to tame my filthy tangled hair, since I'd been neglecting it for days now. It had grown since we'd left Rivendell, hanging down to the middle of my back when I let it out of its usual ponytail. Of course, without anything close to a decent hairbrush handy, that only meant the Medusa-esque tangles were only slightly more nightmarish than usual. I could have murdered a hot bath, some shampoo and a comb. But I made do with using my fingers to tease the worst of the knots out, and mulling over my limited progress in the cryptic flashback department.

In my waking dream on Caradhras… the man I'd seen in the vision… I'd known him. I _knew_ him.

Every time I thought back to it, I felt a sting of familiarity in my gut, and a small tugging pain in my chest. It was a very similar pain to the one I got when I thought of my parents, or my brother, or Katie.

I had no idea who he was, or even his name. But clearly some part of me remembered, and _missed_ him.

It had been by far the clearest and most vivid of both my flashbacks, but it had still left me with frustratingly more questions than answers, again.

But it _had_ revealed one thing. The first time I'd had one of the creepy flashbacks, it had been Gandalf using the Black Speech that had set it off in the council chamber. The second time, it had been two wizards having what equated to a magical long distance shouting match over a mountain range.

As far as I could see, the lowest common denominator in that equations was: _Wizards._

A wizard had been involved _both times_.

Gandalf wasn't stupid, and he wasn't blind. I'd seen the way he reacted in the Council chamber. He knew something more about what was blocking my mind, and he was _deliberately_ not telling me. I just couldn't work out why…

With the silence still hanging like an unwelcome guest over our heads, I was tempted to get up and go over, intent on demanding he give me some straight answers for a change…

"Are we lost?" Pippin asked quietly, his small accented voice cutting through my musings.

"No. I don't think so." Merry whispered back even more quietly, "Shhh though, Gandalf's thinking."

"Merry."

"What?"

"I'm hungry."

"You're always hungry, Pip." Merry replied, trying and failing to add a light chuckle into the words.

"I can't help it. It's been hours since first breakfast."

Pippin's stomach let out a loud growl of agreement, and Merry's chuckle sounded a little more real this time.

"You probably should eat something, Pippin. Your stomach groaning like that will wake the whole of Moria at this rate." I said from when I was perched behind them, also trying and failing to sound more chipper than I felt. I must have looked or sounded worse off than I thought because Pippin's face fell a little when he turned and saw mine.

"Are you alright, Eleanor? You're looking a bit pale."

"Yeah, I'm fine." I said, not even convincing myself with that answer. "Turns out, I just _really_ hate being trapped underground with a mountain full of corpses."

Pippin obviously couldn't think of anything reassuring to say in return, so he just offered me out a piece of the stale bread he'd dug out of his pack with an apologetic smile. I took it, smiling weakly back at him.

"Thanks."

He and Merry both started wolfing down the remains of the small breakfast we'd had earlier. There wasn't loads, but still enough for me to wonder how they managed to put it away and still remain the size they were. My hips couldn't help but feeling a little envious.

"Do all hobbits eat as much as you two?" I asked them curiously, and Merry managed to smile through a mouthful of dried apricots and nuts. He swallowed before answering.

"Not all, but most, I'd say."

"We're a folk of simple pleasures and hearty appetites, m'lady." Pippin added, his grin loud even though he was keeping his voice quiet.

"I suppose I should be grateful one of us thought to pack so much extra food." I was still trying to work out where exactly they'd hidden all of it.

"Well, we could hardly plan to go half way across Arda and not bring along some extras for second-breakfast." He whispered to me conspiratorially. "Speaking of, what do elves normally eat anyway? You're the only elf I've met who likes bacon."

I chuckled dryly.

"Why are you asking me? I think it's already pretty obvious I'm not a 'normal' elf."

"Well, no, but…" He peered tentatively over at Legolas. The blond elf was standing off to one side leaning against the stone wall. Serious faced, staring into the dark, and wound tighter than his own bowstring.

I got what Pippin was getting at.

Air, tension, knife. It was obviously starting to eat at us all, and he didn't want to risk setting anyone else off like he had Gandalf again. Then it was gone again, just like that — the small moment of cheer had gone. Silence fell over us all again as minutes passed. The fleeting moment of laughter dissipated, replaced by the dark and dank quiet of the Mines once again. I was teetering on the edge of telling myself really terrible knock-knock jokes just to keep my mind off the dark, when Sam unexpectedly came to my rescue.

"Miss Eleanor," His quiet Somerset accent sounded weirdly alien in the murky gloom of that horrible place. "Mr Bilbo said that you tell wonderful stories. Could you… maybe tell us one?"

Nine pairs of eyes all turned to fix on me in the dark. I could suddenly feel the weight of their tension, and I swallowed nervously.

"Urm… alright." I said hesitantly, suddenly regretting ever introducing Bilbo to the wonders of Earth-style fairytales. "What kind of story do you want to hear?"

"Something happy, to lift our spirits." Merry suggested.

"But nothing too boring either, mind." Pippin added.

I couldn't help but feel anything I could tell could be as exciting as being trapped in underground dwarven city full of corpses. But hell, I'd take a stab at it.

"Ok, um…" I thought for a moment, mentally rifling through every Brothers Grimm story and Disney film I could think of for ideas. Finally, my thoughts settled on one story I'd missed from back home in particular. I smiled to myself in the dark.

"Alright, I've got one. This is the story of Peter Pan, the boy who never grew up…" (1)

So, I spent the next hour and a half telling a nursery story to four warriors, four hobbits, and one wizard in the dark under a mountain.

I told them about Wendy Darling and her two younger brothers — John and Michael — wishing that they never had to grow up, staying up long into the night telling stories while their parents slept. I told them about Peter Pan and Tinkerbell, and how Peter was fascinated by their stories and would listen, floating silently over their heads in the dark of their nursery. Then I told them how one night the children spotted him, and how he lost his shadow and fairy sidekick when the window to their bedroom was slammed shut before they could escape. I told them of how he returned the next night to get Tinkerbell back, and Wendy offered to help sew his shadow back on in return for a kiss.

Merry and Pippin snickered like school kids when I explained how poor Peter didn't know what a kiss was, so instead Wendy gave him a thimble so he wouldn't be embarrassed. They only smirked harder when I told how in return, he took one of the acorns from his shirt and gave it to her as a "kiss" of his own.

I told them every part of the tale I could remember. Fairy dust allowing the children to fly to Neverland. Tinkerbell getting jealous. The Lost Boys asking Wendy to become their new mother. Tiger Lily and the Indians. Captain Hook, the pirates. And of course, the ticking crocodile.

I suppose I should have felt embarrassed, or awkward, sitting there in the dark telling nine adult men a story about magic, and fairies, and pirates. But it quickly became obvious that I wasn't the only one who'd felt the darkness of the mountain pressing down on them. Regaling them with the adventures of Peter, Wendy and her brothers in Neverland was a welcome distraction for the murky gloom and endless waiting around.

When I finally got to the end — opting for the version were the Darling family adopt the Lost Boys, and Wendy's daughter ends up going on adventures with Peter years later — the air felt lighter than before.

"Well, Master Bilbo spoke true." Gimli commented through his continued chuckling, snorting out little puffs of smoke. He'd barely stopped chortling since I got to the part involving Hook's missing hand getting snapped off by the crocodile. "You have an interesting talent for storytelling, lassie."

"It is one of the more unusual tales I've heard." Boromir agreed with an amused look in my direction. I gave a pleased smile.

"I'll be sure to tell J. M. Barrie you said so."

"Jay-Em… who?" Merry asked, but I avoided opening that particular can of worms by pretending not to have heard him. I got up from my perch on the stairs with the intent to stretch my legs, crossing the small craggy platform towards where Frodo had gone to sit nearer to Gandalf.

Legolas was standing just a little off to one side, leaning against a half destroyed pillar with his arms folded over his bow. He was looking out into the dark, occasionally flickering his gaze back to Gandalf — who as far as I could tell, had slipped into a meditative coma of concentration on the three doorways.

"Still nothing?" I asked quietly, coming up beside him. Tentative as our truce outside the Mines had been, the past two days in the dark had made the conflicting tension between us ease somewhat. It was hard to hold petty grudges in a place like Moria, especially when we were both already struggling to keep from going mad with elf-related claustrophobia.

"Not so far." He answered me softly, not moving his head.

I heaved a heavy sigh and leaned back against the pillar too, wiggling my toes in my boots to get the blood circulating in them again. Legolas turned to look at me in the dark as we just stood there in silence.

"Your story was one I have never heard before." He commented after a moments hesitation. "Is it your own?"

I shook my head, rubbing my hands together and trying to get them to warm up along with my toes.

"I wish. But no, I… heard it from someone else a long time ago." I responded, deliberately vague.

"Someone from your time in Imladris?"

"Not exactly…"

"This 'J.M. Barrie you mentioned? A friend of yours?"

"Why the sudden curiosity in my fairy-tale sources?" I asked, eyeing him warily and pointedly ignoring his previous question. He didn't answer for a moment, and it was too dark to read the expression on his face clearly. He turned away from me slightly to look out over the cavern below us.

"I was curious to know how long you were living there under Lord Elrond's tutelage."

I chewed my lip in uneasy thought. I knew this particular question had been coming.

I'd decided a few days prior that, until further notice, I was going to keep all information on my background as limited as possible from the others. Until I had more blank spaces in my own Middle-Earth memory filled in, the less prying questions from others I had to answer the better. Not the most trusting policy, I know — but it seemed much smarter idea than trying to explain to the Fellowship that I'd come from another world entirely. Especially when I still had no idea how or why it had happened to me.

I wouldn't be able to keep the secret forever, I knew that. But for now, I needed to…

"I was there long enough to learn the pointy end of a scalpel, and where best to aim it. Lets just leave it at that for now, ok?" I answered, dodging the question as gracefully as I could. I poked my index finger at his bow. "What about you, Prince Charming? How long have you been shooting that thing for?"

He didn't glare at the nickname this time, but I saw the tiny twitch in his expression.

"Long enough to know the pointy end of an arrow, and where best to aim it." He replied with a small smile, not missing a beat. I rolled my eyes.

"Haha. Very clever, your highness."

A rumbling growl came from just behind us and I jumped a bit. The pair of us turned to see Pippin's face had gone pink, and Merry was trying to hide his snickering.

"I don't believe it. Pippin, your stomach is growling _again?_"

"Perhaps you might have something to help remedy that, being our capable resident healer?" Legolas smiled minutely at me in what might have passed for sincerity, but I heard the playfully jibing tone hidden underneath.

Keeping my face perfectly straight, I flipped open the medical satchel on my hip, dug inside, and retrieved a long thin needle that was a few inches short of becoming a hat pin. Merry and Pippin watched in confusion and mild alarm as I offered it out to Legolas with a polite smile. Legolas just looked at it, and looked at me.

"What is that for?"

My sweet smile widened.

"Please use it to deflate your head. You'll find it easier to get through the doorway."

Whiskey came out of Gimli's nose. I heard a choking snort come from Boromir, and the hobbits didn't even try to hide their chortles. I also heard a gentle thunk of the back of Aragorn's head hitting stone wall. I didn't care. I'd decided that he — all of them — could disapprove of me and my baffling behaviour as much as they liked. I wasn't useless. I wasn't an idiot. And I was just about done letting myself get walked over by these "big strong men," however politely they might be doing it.

Legolas took the needle from me after a moment, stashing it in a pocket in his hunting leathers without breaking eye contact with me. He smiled narrowly, but underneath I saw the challenging look that said clear as a flashing neon sign:

_You do realise, this means war?_

I gave him my sugariest smile in return, sending him one right back:

_Do your worst, Prince Charming._

"Ah!" Gandalf had been silent so long his voice made me literally jump as he exclaimed, "It's that way!"

"He's remembered!" Merry cried, excitedly scrambling to his feet.

"No, but he air doesn't smell quite so fowl down here." Gandalf said with cheer that I didn't normally associate with him. He walked over to the door on the far left, put his pointy hat back on his head, and patted Merry on the back. "When in doubt Meriadoc, always follow your nose."

Gandalf led us down into the dark, the dim glow of his staff leading the way. It was another climb down some steep stairs, though luckily these ones weren't quite so battered so it didn't take long. When the ground finally levelled out to flat stone again, we came through another tall archway, and out into a room so big I couldn't see where the floor met the walls.

"Let me risk a little more light."

The white light of Gandalf's staff suddenly burned bright enough to make my sensitive eyes sting a little — the light filling the room around us.

Only it wasn't a room.

It was a palace hall, or something that came close. The ceiling was taller than anything I'd ever seen before, towering up hundreds of feet, with huge wrought stone arches holding up the weight of the mountain over our heads. They stretched off in rows and columns for miles over the stone floor, so far away I couldn't see where they ended.

It was beautiful, and kind of frightening all at the same time. I'd seen lavish European cathedrals that would have turned green with envy for the ruins of the dwarven city.

"Behold, the great realm of the dwarf city of Dwarrowdelf!"

"Well, there's an eye opener and no mistake…" Sam breathed out in a rush of awe.

Gandalf led us out into the halls of the city, through the forest of towering stone pillars. He had to occasionally warn us of cracks in the floor, since most of us were so dumbstruck by the overhead view we almost didn't look down to see them in time. It was a long way through the dark, but after a while we reached another wall between a series of great pillars, and a dim light flickering in a doorway not far off.

Gimli gave an elated cry of excitement, and shot off ahead of us without waiting.

"Gimli!" Gandalf called, but the dwarf didn't stop. He dashed through the doorway ahead while the rest of us rushed to catch up. I came through the doorway behind Gandalf to see a ruined room full of more bodies, all of these recognisably dwarves this time. The light had come from a small inlet in the stone ceiling overhead. It was shining a tiny beam of purest daylight down onto a white stone tomb in the centre of the room.

Gimli had fallen onto his knees in front of it, leaning heavily on his axe and sobbing. Real, honest sobbing.

It was a gut wrenching sound to hear coming from the usually gruff old dwarf.

"No…" He was saying over and over, "No…oh, no."

I followed Gandalf as he moved over to stand beside him, looking down at the inscription on the top of the stone.

"Here lies Balin, son of Fudin, Lord of Moria." The wizard read aloud in a solemn voice, quite finality tinging the edges of it. "He is dead then. It is as I feared."

I felt my face fall as I recognised the name. His cousin.

"I'm so sorry, Gimli." I murmured quietly, knowing that nothing I could say would seem like enough. He just shook his head silently, leaning his helm on the polished white stone of his cousin's tomb.

The others had followed in behind us, the hobbits peering between the tomb and the grizzly bodies littering the room with nearly identical frightened expressions. Gandalf had circled around the other side of the stone coffin. One of the half rotten, half mummified bodies was slumped against the side, a thick tome still clutched in brittle fingers. Gandalf beckoned to Pippin, who was the closest, and handed him both his staff and hat. Carefully, the old wizard removed the dead dwarf's hands from the book, picked it up, and opened it with a creak of old parchment and protesting leather. I was surprised the thing didn't just fall to pieces in his hands. It looked ancient…

"We must move on, we cannot linger here." I heard Legolas whisper almost silently to Aragorn behind me. No one else except the Ranger reacted, so I guessed I was the only other one who's heard him. The words made the cold unease that had been lingering in my gut for the past three days turn into icy dread.

Gandalf blew a cloud of dust from the pages of the book, and began to read.

"They have taken the Bridge," He read, only just loud enough for all of us to hear. "And the second hall. We have barred the gates, but cannot hold them for long. The ground shakes… drums in the deep… we cannot get out… a shadow moves in the dark…"

He turned to the last page. I saw that the once neat hand of the scribe had begun to turn frantic and jagged with fear the more he wrote — ending in a single jagged line that cut like a wound across the page.

"We cannot get out… will no one save us… they are coming."

"Pippin—!" Merry's voice hissed suddenly, cutting through the silence left by Gandalf's words.

_Crash!_

A terrified shriek flew up my throat as a thunderous echoing clamour came from right behind me. I clapped both my hands over my mouth, smothering it before it could become a full on horror-movie scream.

Everyone whipped their heads around to find Pippin standing there, his eyes wide and his mouth working soundlessly in shock. He'd backed up to the edge of a well at the side of the room, and had accidentally nudged one of the bodies collapsed over it until the thing's head had just fallen off. It was still making a God awful racket as it plummeted down through the mines and tunnels

Pippin winced.

But just when it seemed like it couldn't get any worse, the rest of the body followed the head down the well. Pippin cringed with every single bang and crash that echoed up through the hole in the floor. After what seemed like forever, the echoing crashes finally feel quiet.

We all just stared at him, utterly silent.

Seconds felt like minutes in the quiet that followed, and it took me a moment to realise I'd been holding my breath the entire time. We all had, I think. I reluctantly uncovered my hands form my mouth, and Gandalf slammed the book shut with a loud _crack_, not bothering to be quiet any longer.

"Fool of a Took!" He barked, furiously snatching his staff and hat back from the smallest hobbit. "Throw yourself in next time, and rid us of your stupidity!"

Poor Pippin looked utterly defeated and miserable, closing his mouth over the apology he'd been about to voice. I was tempted to say something reassuring, but my voice failed when something more bone-chilling than the crashes of the falling body met my ears.

A dull, echoing thump. Coming again and again, like the heartbeat of a monster. I knew it wasn't loud enough for the others to heard it, because Legolas was the only one who reacted when I did. I saw his face instantly set into an impassive stoney frown, but I saw the colour drain a bit from his face.

_Boom… Boom… Boom…_

It was coming from the well. And it was getting louder…

"That doesn't sound like a good noise." I whispered, my voice gone high with nerves. It was loud enough for the others to hear, and they all reacted in exactly the same way Legolas and I had. The hobbits blanched, while Gandalf and the others turned alert, their hands twitching towards their weapons.

"Mr. Frodo!" Sam suddenly cried out, pointing down at the other hobbit's hip. Frodo pulled aside his travelling cloak. The blade of his elvish made short sword was glowing a a bight pale blue.

"Orcs!" Legolas said, his voice coming out half a growl and half a warning.

As if the emphasise the point, the sound of inhuman howling and shrieking echoed up through the well and from the hall outside, cackling like hyenas. The sound set tremors of purely primary terror rushing through me.

Boromir, who'd been standing closest to the entrance, dashed back towards it to look out. If he'd been a second faster, an arrow would have nailed his head to the door. Three black shafts sank into the wood inches from his nose with muffled _whiz-thunk_s. All the colour drained from his face, but he controlled himself and heaved the heavy wooden doors shut with Aragorn's help.

"They have a cave troll." He informed us, somehow managing to sound more annoyed than worried at the prospect.

"Get back! Stay close to Gandalf!" Aragorn shouted at the hobbits as Legolas blurred towards them, helping gather what little there was available to barricade the ancient entranceway. There wasn't much available, and the wood of the door was already damaged just shy of falling off it's frame. Whatever was coming from the other side, it wouldn't be enough to keep it out very long.

I felt sweat beating on the back of my neck and my hands started shaking a bit.

Gandalf drew the sword he had tried to his belt, and the hobbits all did the same with their shorter versions — Frodo's elvish one glowing like a tiny blue star. Boromir, Aragorn and Legolas backed away from the door the second it started rattling on it's hinges. Legolas knocked back an arrow against his bowstring like it was as instinctive for him as breathing. Aragorn did the same beside him with one he'd snatched from a fallen dwarf, and Boromir readied his sword and shield with a grim expression etched into his face.

"Eleanor, your knife!" Aragorn snapped back at me over his shoulder.

Almost numb with fear, I obediently unsheathed the blade. Instinctively I turned it over in my hand, so the blade faced back towards my elbow, the razor edge facing outwards — just like he'd shown me two years ago. My hands were trembling, my knees were shaking; but the grip of the knife familiar, and the blade was a comforting weight in my hand.

I knew how to use it, but I was terrified beyond logical thought by then. I bit my lip almost hard enough to draw blood, trying to make myself stop trembling and _think _past the fear_._

_'"Use it like a tool, rather than let it use you."'_

I'm still not sure if it was actually Tink speaking in my head that time, or just my recall of her cryptic advice. But it didn't matter. I stuffed my fear down as best I could, sat on it, and locked it away for later. I could melt into a gibbering mess later…

"Stay behind us." Aragorn told me quietly without looking, and I had no intention of disobeying this time. I could tell him to quit playing the dictator when we were all out of this hell hole alive.

Hopefully in mostly one piece.

"Let them come!" Gimli bellowed furiously from where he'd climbed onto Balin's tomb, his grizzled dwarven voice turning savage with rage for his fallen kin. "There is yet one dwarf in Moria who still draws breath!"

Cracks had begun to appear in the door. One of Legolas's arrows blurred through one when it was large enough, and a high pitched squeal of pain came from the other side. It didn't stop them though.

One loud bang shook dust from the ceiling. A second. A third.

And the door shattered inwards, spilling monsters into the room.

**_~ / ~ / ~ / ~_**

I really wish I could say that I fought bravely. That I was a badass warrior princess; all spinning blades, cool nerve, and whatnot.

The truth is, I was so terrified I almost forgot how to breathe.

Orcs are fucking scary, ok. Not just because they're ugly as sin, or that they were wielding weapons that looked like they belonged on the set of a Saw movie — but the _sounds_ they made as they rushed us. Howls, screeches, dull crashes, and the sound of metal hitting metal. It was sodding petrifying.

What I _did_ manage to do in spades was dodge, dive and/or scream away when anything pointy or sharp got within a foot of my face. Occasionally I remembered that I was armed with my hunting knife, using it to block incoming blows I couldn't dodge, or stab and slash limbs that were in the way of my escape. I wasn't going to kid myself into believing I was any good at fighting, but I could dodge things intent on killing me like it was going out of style.

I just hadn't got the hang of doing it gracefully, yet.

Something to work on in future — provided we ever got out of here alive of course.

'_Come get me, you ugly bastards!'_ Tink sang mockingly at them all, her voice ringing through my head like a war cry. For all the life threatening peril we were in, she seemed to be enjoying herself immensely — shouting taunts and vulgarities at the bloodthirsty orcs from inside the safety of my mind.

_'This isn't a bloody Indiana Jones movie, you nutcase!' _I screamed back at her, the words almost coming out through my mouth they were so loud.

She just laughed, the sound completely unhinged, bordering on insane.

The others for their part, seemed to be handling things only marginally better. Boromir and Aragorn were brutal in their swinging attacks, not bothering with finesse with their blades in such close quarters. I'd lost track of Legolas and Gandalf somewhere after the first wave, but I could hear the occasional _thwunk_ as one of Legolas's arrows made contact. Gimli was running on so much pent up fury that he'd gone very nearly berserk with rage, tearing and shredding through anything that got in the way of his two massive war axes.

Even the hobbits, despite their size, were fierce little buggers too, when they wanted to be. I got a lovely mental snap shot of Sam knocking a particularly hideous orc out cold with one powerful swing from his frying pan — Rapunzel style.

I might have laughed, if I could only remember how my lungs worked.

Still terrified almost to the point of numbness, I kept up with the chaos as best I could. I'd just started to find something close to a strategy for avoiding swings of the orcs — ducking their swings at the last second, then raking my knife diagonally across the inner elbow of their weapon arm. Then a huge, roaring, battleship of a creature came crashing through what remained of the broken door. Splintered wood sprayed over the floor, and I looked up to find myself gaping at a monster from a Harry Potter movie — only twice as big, and three times uglier.

The cave troll.

It was almost as tall as the ceiling, hunched over with heavy slabs of muscle, and thick grey hide that I instinctively knew would be harder to pierce than kevlar. It had a huge linked chain dangling around it's thick neck, like some kind of leash, and a spiked mace the size of a car door clutched in a meaty hand.

It looked really pissed off. And it was looking straight down at me.

I couldn't help myself. I started cackling hysterically and shouting, "Troll! Troll in the dungeon!"

That's when the fun _really_ started.

The cave troll roared. It was so loud I actually felt it shake the ground under my feet. Dust and loose stones fell from the ceiling. If it hadn't been for Frodo suddenly stumbling into my side, I might have remained there, petrified to the floor. I stumbled sideways and caught him before we could both fall over.

The troll lunged towards us, swinging that monster of a mace over its head until it brushed the ceiling. I didn't give myself a chance to scream. Frodo and I both dove — well, fell really — forward onto the ground, rolling clumsily between its leg and onto the other side as the giant weapon shattered the ground where we'd been standing into dust.

It whirled on us again, slow and clumsy, but more than making up for it in sheer bulk. It wouldn't need the mace to kill us. It could have crushed us both to pulp under one giant foot, if it had the brains to try…

Turns out, it _did_ have the brains to try. But only just.

It raised one huge leg into the air, preparing to bring it down on me and the Ring barer sprawled on the floor next to me. But instead of squashing us flat, it began to fall backwards with a howl of frustration. I scrambled back, seeing that Aragorn and Boromir had both seized the huge chain encircling the troll's neck, pulling back hard enough to heave the thing off balance.

The troll, enraged beyond sense at the the two men, whirled on them, disregarding us completely. It swung a huge fist at the two men.

Aragorn ducked and rolled, but Boromir wasn't quite fast enough. The blow caught his cheek, sending him into a dazed spin, though he somehow managed to keep hold of the chain. The troll, in a moment of badly timed lucidity, grasped hold of the other end of the chain. Before Boromir had a chance to regain his bearings, it swung the massive leash like a whip.

The human warrior went flying straight into a wall and fell straight onto a pile of corpses, his sword clattering to the ground.

"Boromir!" I heard myself shriek. I scrambled to my feet and making a dash towards him, praying his neck hadn't just been broken by the fall.

I was a reasonably good healer by now. But no one was _that_ good.

Relief flooded my entire body in a wave when I saw him lift his head, trying to shake the stars from his eyes. He obviously wasn't firing on all cylinders after that blow, because he didn't see the orc coming at him with a machete the size of a butcher's knife until it was almost on him. It snarled through black teeth, peeled back with glee, and raised the weapon over it's head for a downward swing.

In case anyone tries telling you this in future: practice does _not_ in fact make perfect.

Practice makes permanent. And Glorfindel — no matter how much he may have disliked me — had made damn sure I'd practiced with my chosen weapon until I could wield it without thinking. And it clearly worked, because I _did_ react without thinking.

Jerking one of my eight throwing knives out of its pouch, I flipped it over in my palm so I was gripping it lightly by the blade. My aim fixed, I bent my arm back so the handle was almost touching my ear, and flung the knife with the sharp flick of my wrist I'd been made to practice a zillion times to get right.

My knife hit the orc at the base of the spine with a wet _thun_k.

The orc convulsed in sudden pain and shock. The blow wasn't fatal, but it was more than enough to give Boromir time to snatch up his sword, and take the monster's head clean off it's shoulders. He saw me, saw the knife in the dead orc's back, and just stared for a second, stunned. If I wasn't so high with adrenaline, I might have been grossed out at what I'd just done. As it was, I could only feel a little dash of nausea, plus a little twinge of satisfaction at how I'd likely just saved his life.

My mini moment of heroism was cut short when another orc suddenly grabbed me from behind, in what I could only describe as a rib crunching bear hug, my arms locked to my sides. The air left my lungs in a grunting rush, my feet came off the ground, and I started thrashing and shrieking furiously, trying to get free. It snarled in my ear, and the stench of rotting meat and unwashed skin almost made me wretch.

One of the hobbits shouted my name, but I couldn't tell who it was.

One of my thrashing kicks caught the orc in the shins, and it hunched forward with a grunt of pain — just enough for my feet to reach the floor. I planted my weight, and slammed the back of my head into the orc's face. It howled as its nose crunched, a disgusting spray of dark blood spattering the back of my neck. I elbowed it in the stomach and shoved my weight forward, scrambling away before it could try and grab me again.

The troll was still going after Aragorn, and now Gimli, taking wide, heavy swings at them.

They were doing a good job of dodging, sometimes even managing to get the troll's mace to crash into an unsuspecting orc instead. I'd just dodged behind Balin's (surprisingly still in tact) tomb when something flew straight over my head and thunked straight into the troll's chest. I only realised it was one of Gimli's war axes when I heard him let out a clamouring battle cry from right behind me.

The troll bellowed back in fury. My ears rang. It swung the mace down at us again.

I screamed and scrambled back fast on my butt and elbows, just as the mace came down on the front half of the tomb, throwing Gimli off backwards and crushing the polished white stone to powder. I rolled onto my front as the world spun and started to crawl away, choking on the dust filling my lungs.

Then something huge and strong as a bulldozer seized me by the ankle.

I had just enough time to think; _'Oh God, not again!' _

Then I was being dragged back across the floor and up into the air, dangling upside down by one leg. I blinked the dust from my eyes, and found myself face to face with the ugliest mug I'd ever seen. It probably didn't help that I was viewing the troll upside down, or that its breath reeked of what smelled disturbingly like over cooked pork. It growled right into my terrified face, and I almost passed out for the stench.

"Lass!" I heard Gimli bellow from somewhere in the chaos.

I couldn't do anything. My hunting knife had fallen from my hand somewhere by Balin's tomb where I'd dropped into the dust. I tried to reach for a knife in my dagger pouch, but it had twisted and stuck closed. I tried to struggle free, but I might as well have tried to defy gravity for all the good it did. I didn't even have enough air left in my lungs to scream.

I saw what it was going to do seconds before it happened.

The troll drew back it's arm, the spiked mace ready to swing directly at my head. If that thing so much as clipped me, they'd be sending my remains back to Rivendell in a shoebox.

Unable to contain myself, I covered my head and closed my eyes, bracing myself for the bone shattering impact.

But it never came.

Instead the troll howled in pain, jerking furiously and swinging me like a hyperactive child with a yoyo. My eyes flew open, and still viewing the world from upside down, I saw why all my skull hadn't been smashed in.

Legolas had used my needle. The one I'd given him earlier. He'd climbed onto one of the higher platforms over the room, and had managed to jab it through a gap in the troll's thick hide. It had gone right into the wrist joint, just as it had drawn it's huge arm back to take a swing at me. He must have hit a tendon or nerve, because all the muscles in the troll's massive hand went suddenly limp and useless as a dishrag. The massive spiked mace fell to the floor with a dull boom, crushing a wounded orc flat where it fell.

Relief mixed with ridiculous petty resentment filled me.

I was _never_ going to live this down.

I'd given Legolas that needle to sting his pride. And what had he done? He'd gone and saved my life with. The bastard.

Next thing I knew, the troll had thrown me. In a perfect world, I would have fallen daintily into the waiting arms of our resident elven Disney prince. But since this was neither a perfect world nor a Disney film, I was hurled like a screaming sack of onions straight into a dazed looking Sam. He made a valiant attempt to catch me, bless him. He might as well have been trying to catch a cannonball in flight for all the good it did.

I slammed into him, and we both crashed hard to the stone floor. My head smacked hard against something solid, and my eyes went very blurry, along with my hearing. I just lay there for ages, waiting for the world to stop pinwheeling and come back into focus.

It felt strangely like being underwater.

I was still at least half conscious, but the entire world was muffled. I heard a lot of crashing, banging, and shouting. A terrified cry came from one of the hobbits, and furious shouts of horror and rage from the rest of them. I couldn't tell who. Another bellowing roar from the troll shook the walls and the stone beneath me. Another whizz-thunk for one of Legolas's arrows, then a bone shatteringly heavy body sent a shockwave through the ground under me as it hit the floor.

The troll I guessed. Just for a moment, it was mercifully quiet for a few wonderful seconds…

Then I was being shaken by someone kneeling over me and calling my name over and over. I blinked fuzzy eyes frantically, trying to get them to focus past my dizzyingly spinning head. When they finally did, I found Boromir looking down at me in relief. Presumably that I was still alive and well. Not a red and squishy mess on the stone floor.

I choked out a wheezing breath of thanks, and he helped me sit up.

Then I saw what had made the other hobbits scream.

Frodo was lying face down in the rubble, as still as any of the corpses surrounding us all. My stomach clenched.

_'No. Oh God, no.'_

Aragorn and a frantic Sam were already next to him, the latter not daring to try and even touch him. I saw the anguish on Aragorn's face from across the room. He moved to roll the little body of the hobbit onto his back.

"Don't touch him!" I tried to scream, but it came out a bit garbled and slurred as if I was drunk. Aragorn froze and I scrabbled to my feet, stumbling over on shaky legs, not waiting for Boromir to help me up. If Frodo was by some miracle still alive after that blow, he couldn't afford to have anyone accidentally injuring him more.

"Don't try and move him." I ordered, my stronger voice finally coming back to me again. I dropped onto the ground next to the hobbit on my bruised knees. The spear had come out and was laying in the rubble next to him. He was lying on his front, and I was responsibly sure looking at him that his neck or spine hadn't been broken. But he still wasn't moving, not even to draw shallow breaths. Dread pooling in my belly, I _very_ carefully rolled him over onto his back.

The dark haired hobbit rasped out a winded gasp and clutched at his chest, and I almost had a heart attack.

"Jesus, Frodo!"

"He's alive!" Sam sounded almost tearful with relief.

Frodo leaned forward and rasped in several deep and painful sounding breaths. Sam and I helped him to sit up when he finally got his breath back again.

"I'm alright. I'm not hurt." He wheezed out, his voice scratchy. Aragorn for the first time since I'd met him, looked truly dumb founded.

"You should be dead!" He said in astonishment. "That spear could have skewered a wild boar."

"I think there is more to this than meets the eye." Gandalf, said in a knowing tone as he came up behind us, looking down at the hobbit still on the floor. The old man was sporting an impressive bruise on his jaw, and still had his sword in one hand and staff in the other.

Frodo, looked up at the wizard, then down at his shirt. The top two buttons had come open in the attack, and there was something silvery and metallic peeking out over the top. I suddenly remembered what it was, and where he'd got it, just as he pulled his shirt aside for us to see clearly what was hiding underneath.

"Mithril!" Gimli voiced, both surprised and impressed upon seeing the light chainmail shirt protecting the hobbit's small torso. "You're full of surprises, Master Baggins."

Full of surprises or not, I was clearly the only one who was very conscious of the fact that he'd just been _stabbed in the chest with a spear, _**_by a troll!_**

A bit exasperated at their collective gawking, I pushed Aragorn's hand aside and rolled up the mithril shirt over Frodo's side — going instinctively into what I'd patented Lord Elrond's 'healer mode.' Some of the links in the chainmail had cut into his skin a bit where the spear had punched him. I was careful to avoid them as I pressed my fingers gently into his side, counting down as I checked each rib. When I came to the second from the bottom he winced and flinched away.

"Two cracked ribs." I mumbled more to myself than the others, and immediately turned to fish through the medical satchel still strapped securely to my left hip. "You're going to have one hell of a bruise, but everything else looks alright."

I pulled out the flask of pain relief draught I'd mixed before leaving Rivendell and pushed it into his hand.

"Take a swig, it'll dull the pain." I told him firmly. He did so without question, and with a grateful nod at me. Then Sam and Gandalf were helping him back to slightly shaky feet again, taking a while and some help to find his balance again.

"Eleanor, here."

I looked up abruptly to see Aragorn looking at me seriously, and holding something out to me. My hunting knife. The one I'd dropped — again — when the troll grabbed me. The same one he'd told me not to lose, and the look on his face told me he'd remembered.

I took it sheepishly, but didn't yield under his gaze this time. He nodded at me in acceptance and started to get up.

I was about to get up too when I stopped in my track, watching Aragorn rise awkwardly. His right arm was perfectly fine, still gripping his sword at the ready. But where his left arm met his torso looked wrong, even through the shirt and cloak. Where the curve of his shoulder should have been smooth, there was a jagged angle spiking sharply downwards. It was only when he stood up straight and gave a small but noticeable wince of pain that I realised why…

"Um… Aragorn?" I said tentatively, weirdly unsure of how to speak to him since the last time we had had been on the mountainside of Caradhras. He turned to look at me expectantly.

"Yes?"

"You realise your shoulder is dislocated, right?"

His eyebrows pinched in a frown, and he looked down at where his left arm hung limp at his side — perfectly normal, except for the shoulder joint making a large bump poke out in the line of his tunic. He looked genuinely surprised at the sight. Either he (like me) was still flying high as a kite on adrenaline, or he had an insanely high pain threshold, because he barely seemed to have noticed.

Aragorn can be a really scary bastard sometimes, even when he isn't trying.

Not saying a word more, he marched straight over to me, holding his dislocated arm against his side to keep it from flopping, and gestured to it minutely with his chin. I knew instantly what he meant for me to do. Silly as if was, I couldn't help but feel a little twinge of relief. He might disapprove of my conduct and behaviour, but he still trusted me and my training with Lord Elrond enough to do this.

Not wasting a breath, I took his wrist firmly in my hand just like I'd been taught to, and braced my arm under his elbow to hold the arm straight.

"Ready?" I asked.

He just grunted.

"One, two…"

I rotated the arm, pushing up with my legs and pressing into it. The joint snapped back into the socket with a loud _pop_. Aragorn gave a muffled groan of pain and hunched over on his knees, but otherwise didn't complain. I thrust the bottle of pain relief draught at him, and he took a long swig before handing it back to me.

"Thank you."

"For future reference," I said through a strained chuckle, the post-battle wobbles finally starting to set in, "if any of you ever get injured doing something involving a troll again, you can bloody well stitch yourself back together."

A light, exhausted round of weary chuckles came from the hobbits, wizard and dwarf. I even caught Legolas smiling with a peculiarly relieved look on his face. He'd come out of the fight almost untouched, save for a purpling bruise on his cheek and a shallow cut on his forehead.

But the moment was short lived. It had been barely a minute or two since the end of our first real fight, but it had been enough to wake what had obviously been sleeping deep within Moria's depths. Howls, and shrieks, more high pitched and cackling than the orcs suddenly started coming up from the doorways and through the cracks in the floor.

Gandalf turned to us, face grim and sword still drawn as he headed straight for the door at the opposite end of the room without waiting.

"We must not wait here. Quickly, to the bridge of Khazad-dûm!"

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><p><strong>Credits: <strong>

(1) The story of **_"Peter & Wendy"_** was written by J.M. Barrie in 1911, and I do not claim any credit over the story.

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><p><strong>AN: Lets keep the ball rolling! Onwards to Chapter 13 in a few hours!**


	14. Part II : Chapter 13

**26 / 03 /15 ~ In which Eleanor and the Fellowship come face to face with a fiery god-monster.**

**Disclaimer:** _"The Lord of the Rings" is the property of J. R. R. Tolkien. I only claim ownership over Eleanor Dace and the subsequent plot of her story._

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><p><strong>AN: thesonicsmiley: **Haha, I did say future chapters were going to be long (though granted, I didn't plan that last one to be over 10,000 words.) I'm really happy you liked it though, and that you think dear old Ellie is more bad-ass than she gives herself credit for. Hope you enjoy the update!

**aqua-empress: **Aw, dear, your reviews always leave me feeling all warm fuzzy inside. :) Glad you enjoyed the fight scenes and Ellie's general flailing in the face of life-threatening peril. Heres hoping you enjoy this one just as much!

**Erwynia: **Thank you! I'm so glad you were patient enough to wait around for the update! Hope you enjoy the update. :)

**Osireia: **I won't lie, getting long reviews sometimes makes me a little nervous, but your one was an absolute joy to read. I'm so pleased that someone noticed the effort I've put into trying to give the other Fellowship members some depth, rather than just letting them sit passively as 2D characters in the background. It's difficult, but it's so worth it if I know even one of my readers appreciates it! As for the subject of future relationships: I asked a lot of my readers, and from all the votes I got on all my various writing pages, Legolas came out at the top every time. Though I like to use it as a guide, I don't always stick to exactly what my readers want out of 'voted content.' But yes, in all likely hood this will probably eventually turn into a Legomance. Emphasis on the word_ eventually_. If there is one thing I am a complete sucker for, it's relationships (both romanic and platonic) that take time and a lot of hiccups to evolve.

Thank you so much for such a detailed review, and for pointing out exactly which aspects of my writing you've enjoyed the most! I'll try to keep the standard of work up as we continue with the story. I really hope you enjoy where it leads!

**Mistra Rose: **Lol, poor little Ellie does tend to get tossed around like a rag doll, doesn't she? XD And yeah, intentions and their unintended side-effects are going to play a big part in future chapters I think. Also, really glad you liked the needle part — it came out of nowhere when I was writing this chapter, but I loved it too much to leave it out!

**Ok, no more beating about the bush! On with the story, Macduff!**

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><p><strong><em>Part II : Chapter 13<em>**

- And Then There Were Nine -

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><p>When I was human, my running coach once jokingly boasted that I could have outrun a Mongol horde if I was motivated enough. I'd laughingly replied that he only said that because he was the one who'd trained me.<p>

But it ain't boasting if it's true.

I'd been fast as a human.

But as an elf, I reckon I could have given an Olympic sprinter a run for their money, literally. Especially with an army of howling blood-thirsty goblins snapping at our heels.

Like there were right now. There were hundreds of them. Maybe thousands. It was impossible to tell in the near pitch darkness. Where there was enough light to see, they were coming up through holes in the fool, and crawling out of cracks high in the ceiling like spiders. Spiders with swords, knives, spears, and other various implements of nastiness.

We ran fast. We just weren't fast enough.

Gandalf's staff light shone on the path through the Dwarrodelf halls ahead of us. They were already there, waiting for us.

I'd been flying ahead of the others in a sprint just behind Gandalf when Aragorn suddenly seized me by the wrist, jerking me back behind him and Boromir. One of the goblins made a snarling grab for my hair, but Gimli clobbered it in the face with the pommel of his axe, snarling back just as viciously. They were everywhere now, forming a hissing, snarling circle around us like wolves boxing in wounded cattle. The hobbits had been pushed back behind us into the centre of our little cluster. They were trembling almost more than me as they held their short swords, ready to fight their way free if they had to. Not that that looked like a viable option. With how many there were now, and with how hungry they looked, I estimated we might make it fifty feet before something hideous and screeching cut us into sashimi.

Something deep and booming, so low pitched it was almost inaudible, rumbled through the cracked stone floor. The cavern went abruptly, eerily silent. All the shrieking and howling of the goblins stopped, and I saw a couple of them look suddenly and very nervously at each other over Boromir's shoulder.

The sound came again. Louder this time.

Thunder. Underground.

_'Ok, I take it back.'_ I murmured quietly inside my head. _'_**_That_**_ was definitely not a good sound.'_

Another low rumble rattled stones on the floor near our feet. A huge shadow moved somewhere in the darkness, followed by a dim glowing orange light appearing not far off through the forest of pillars.

_'We need to run, boss!'_ Tink's voice suddenly rang franticly through my mind. _'We can't handle this! Not yet!'_

I'd almost started adjusting to the feeling of the fear pulsing through me. But the panicked sound in Tink's voice redoubled the feeling until I had to fight the urge to literally run for my life.

_'… What is that thing?'_

_'Pray we don't get to find out.'_ Her voice was very near panic, whispering at me as if she was afraid it might hear her if she spoke too loud within vaults of my mind. _'For sod sake, Eleanor, we need to run! _**_Now!_**_'_

The goblins clearly thought that was a splendid idea, because they all gave collective shrieks of terror and began falling back, scurrying back down the cracks and holes in the stone from whence they'd come. Gimli gave a deep rumbling growl of satisfaction next to me, but icy dread had started pooling in my belly again. Whatever it was that had scared the goblins away, I didn't think it was anything we should be pleased about.

I tried to think back to what I'd read at this part of the book, to what could possibly have frightened Tink so much.

Tink — my personified primal instinct — who'd told me to use my fear as a tool. Tink, who hadn't been impressed with a bunch of orcs that nearly butchering us five minutes ago. Tink who I was beginning to realise knew a hell of a lot more about what was going on here than she was telling me…

But my brain had short circuited, too tired and too scared to think anything other than:_ Run! Run fast!_

"What is this new devilry?" Boromir's voice came almost soundlessly from inches behind me. Before us, Gandalf had his eyes shut in concentration, listening to the rumbling sounds of whatever was coming for us through the Mines. The fiery orange glow far off in the darkened hall was getting brighter, closer, casting eerie shadows onto the floor as it passed the pillars of the ruined city.

"A balrog." Gandalf answered darkly, and the name hit home something buried deep in my memory of Tolkien's stories.

My mind conjured up memories of illustrated monsters, towering tall and formed entirely of inky blackness and flames, horns curling out of their heads like a caricature of a stereotypical demon. The mental image seemed ridiculous. Somehow I doubted the real thing would be anything as tame as that, and I didn't want to stick around long enough to find out.

"It is a demon of the ancient world. This foe is beyond any of you! Run!"

Now that was an idea I could get on board with.

We ran.

We ran like your tails were on fire. And for all I knew, given the amount of roaring and rumbling coming from behind us, burned backsides could have become a legitimate concern.

It was like running through a nightmare, that long stretch of the mines we followed Gandalf though, dodging rubble and cracks in the floor until the glow of light appeared through a stone doorway just ahead. Gandalf herded us all in ahead of him, practically throwing Merry through when he stumbled and almost fell down.

I shot through and down the stairs behind Boromir. I almost slammed straight into the back of him as he screeched to a sudden halt. He stumbled and very nearly went straight over the edge into the fire-lit gorge that had appeared right ahead of us. Legolas appeared out of nowhere and seized him by the back of his cloak, yanking him back onto the stairs before he could do a swan-dive off the edge.

"Lead them on, Aragorn! The bridge is near!" Gandalf ordered behind us, pushing the ranger ahead of him. When Aragorn didn't react fast enough, Gandalf almost threw him bodily off his feet.

"Do as I say! Swords are no more use here!" He thundered.

Another boom rumbled through the stone stairs, followed by another menacingly echoing growl from a thundering throat. Like any of us needed a bigger incentive to keep running.

Down the stairs we went, fast as possible without tripping and falling into the bottomless pit yawning beneath the narrow walkways. Every so often the staircases would suddenly change direction, leading us further and further down until I wasn't sure if I was dizzy from vertigo, or literally running in endless circles. Halfway down, we hit yet another problem. A huge jagged gap in the walkway. It was a frustratingly ambiguous size — not far enough to keep you from thinking about jumping, but just far enough to make one little miss-step absolutely fatal.

Of course, that meant Legolas jumped it in one graceful leap like it was nothing at all. Even in a fiery pit of doom, I couldn't stop myself from hating him just a little bit for it.

Seriously, could he _not_ be irritatingly perfect for just five minutes?

Another ground shaking boom rattled the walls of the cavern and stairs under us. Dust, stone and large pieces of shale started to break loose, tumbling down from the ceiling high above us. The balrog monster thing, was obviously getting closer, because it felt as if the air in the cave had started rising.

Gandalf went next. For a wizened old man, he was pretty light on his feet. He leaped the gap in one go, landing heavily but safely on the other side, with Legolas there to steady him when he stumbled on the crumbling stairs. I was about to take the leap too, when something shot past my cheek, flicking up a loose stand of hair as it passed. I flinched, feeling where it left a shallow cut across my cheek. Another almost caught Merry in the leg, and I saw it was an arrow as it bounced off the stone by his foot.

A look up showed us all that the bloody goblins who'd surrounded us earlier and then run away had grown their balls back. Only now they weren't coming after us with crude machetes and spears. They'd opted for just shooting at us from the platforms above with crossbows. Lovely.

Legolas drew and aimed his bow in a blur, and started returning fire while Boromir followed the jump next. Scooping both Merry and Pippin under each arm, he hurled himself over the gap from a running start.

"Sam! You next!" Aragorn yelled, barely giving any warning before picking the terrified hobbit up by the scruff of his coat and flinging him straight into Gandalf's arms. He turned to face me and Gimli. The dwarf gave him a severe look with a shake of his fist.

"No one tosses a dwarf!"

And with that wonderful mental image, he hurled himself over the edge. For someone so short and weighed down with so much muscle, he was shockingly good at jumping long distances. Not quite good enough to reach the other side unaided though. His boots landed firmly, but his body decided to stay behind, teetering backwards with his arms pinwheeling.

Legolas, in a moment of quick but unwise thinking, grabbed Gimli by the end of his huge red beard. Gimli howled in furious protest, but the blond elf ignored him, pulling him to safety.

The only left Frodo, Aragorn and me on the other side.

Another thundering boom shook loose even more debris from overhead. Frodo yelled a warning just in time for the three of us to jump back away from the edge as a stone the size of my head slammed down onto the spot Aragorn had been seconds before. It shattered the fragile edge of the crack in the stairs, making the gap even wider as we stumbled back to keep from falling.

If it had been a difficult jump before, it was verging on suicidal now.

As if it wasn't perilous enough already, another stone dropped and smashed through our retreat back up the stairs behind us. We were essentially left standing on a broken pillar, balanced precariously only by our own evenly distributed weight. And the goblins were _still_ shooting at us.

"Shite, shite, shite!" Was my eloquent response to this development, trying to stay upright as the ground under our feet began to sway drunkenly. Aragorn's hand seized my wrist, steadying me, and I grasped his forearm in a white-knuckled flood grip. He grasped Frodo by the shoulder and leaned us against the roll of the stairs, trying to keep us balanced.

"Hang on! Keep your feet planted!" He shouted at us both, and again, I didn't feel any burning desire to disobey. The stairs tipped at a heart-stopping angle to the left before Aragorn manoeuvred us to counterbalance the weight, tipping us back to the right. I thought my heart was going to crawl up into my throat.

"Lean forward!" He commanded over the howls and shrieks of the goblins overhead. "When you're close enough, jump!"

He pushed both of us forward until we were all but leaning out over the edge. The platform began to tilt, falling forwards towards the over side of the broken stair case, where the others were there waiting to catch us.

I hoped.

Stone smashed against stone, and I jumped.

For once, I was grateful that Legolas was as inhumanly strong as he was. If he hadn't been, I'd have died right there.

The edge of the stairs crumbled and gave out from under my feet, and I felt myself dropping backwards. I screamed, and Legolas seized my wrist, pulling me hard towards him. My arm all but came out of its socket with the force. Something went _whiz-thunk_ right behind me, and a dull pain suddenly appeared in my side. Then my face smacked hard against Legolas's chest as he pulled me back away from the edge. My head spun, my cheekbone throbbed where it had slammed into his collarbone, and I suddenly had the scent of cut grass and pine needles filling my nose…

How the _hell_ did he smell so good? We'd been stuck underground for three days, yet he smelled like a bloody alpine forest after a summer storm. _How?_

"—you alright?"

It took a chaos filled second to realise he'd yelled a question at me over the noise, and I spluttered out a response before I could run it past my brain.

"I'll be fine… once I've thrown up."

One last deafening boom shook the entire cavern like the shock of an earthquake, and a crack the size of a city bus appeared in the wall where the door we'd come through was.

"We need to get out of here." Legolas for once sounded truly afraid, and he started pulling me none too gently down the walkway after the others.

"Best idea you've had yet." I wheezed out, all but falling down the stairs after him. He kept a firm hold of my hand as we ran down into the tunnels, the heat becoming almost unbearable. Finally we reached one final hallway, with a long narrow causeway at the end. Beyond that there was yet another stone archway.

But this one had daylight streaming through it. The way out.

Legolas turned and thrust me out ahead of him, forcing me to run with him and Gimli in step right behind me.

"Don't slow down." He somehow managed to keep his voice calm even though I knew he was running on just as much adrenaline as me. I probably had enough to power a small country by this point. I was very near pain with breathlessness and smoke inhalation, the heat in the tunnel building to something like the inside of a kiln. Just ahead through the heat haze, Gandalf was ushering the hobbits hurriedly across the narrow walkway after Aragorn and Boromir.

I flew after them across the bridge, forcing myself not to look down.

"Sodding dwarves! Who builds bridges this narrow and thinks its a good idea?!" I panted out through my scorched throat, trying to keep my balance while sprinting along the narrow causeway. Clearly the fear had at last fried what was left of my brain by then, because I started cackling hysterically at my own joke.

"Less laughing, more running, lass!" Gimli shouted from right behind me. I ran faster, but couldn't make myself stop shrieking with maniacal terrified laughs. The others had already started scrambling up the stairs towards the exit on the other side. But just as Gimli, Legolas and I reached the other side, I saw Frodo whirl to look back. The horrified look that appeared on his face made me look too. Gandalf had stopped right in the middle of the bridge. He's turned his back to us, facing straight towards the…

I'd been right.

The illustrations I'd seen of the balrog didn't even come close.

It was huge, well over 15 feet tall, but bizarrely that was the least imposing thing about it. It had taken on the shape of a minotaur, heavy and broad across human-like shoulders, but snarling furiously through the face of a savage bull. Thick curling horns protruded from either side of it's head, and where it's body wasn't entirely formed of thick smoke or wreaths of flame, there was nothing but utter blackness. It was like looking at the unholy offspring of a blackhole and a nuclear disaster.

And it had all it's wrath aimed squarely down at the comparatively tiny grey wizard.

Gandalf stared up at it with a look of grim but exhausted determination, staff in one hand and sword in the other.

"You will not pass." He told the huge fiery monster adamantly, as if he was shouting a fact of the universe, and not an obvious challenge. The balrog drew itself up to it's full height, it's shadowy wings spreading and the fire forming it's body surging in fury.

I heard Frodo call Gandalf's name in fear for him, but the sounds was almost completely drowned out.

Gandalf murmured something too quite for me to hear over the roar of the flames, and held up his staff as the tip began to glow, brighter and sharper than any star, forming a sphere of light around him. The light seemed to enrage the balrog beyond all sense, because it formed a flaming sword as big as a small bridge in it's hand and swung it down at the wizard. Somehow, Gandalf managed to deflect the blow with a combination of his sword and the light I know realised was acting like a shield.

He was keeping it from following us across the bridge — though it wasn't without it's cost. I could see the exhaustion on his face from where I stood frozen to the spot.

_'He'll be ok…' _I told myself, but I couldn't quite make myself believe my own words.

The balrog roared, and the heat of it's breath was something straight from the inside of a volcano. I lifted my hand to shield my face, seeing Frodo and Boromir do the same just behind me.

"Go back to the shadows!" Gandalf growled, his voice taking on the same furious thunder it had when he'd shielded us from Saruman on Caradhras. As if just to prove it could, the balrog took one thumping step onto the narrow bridge, another fiery weapon forming in it's hand. A whip this time.

A _bull_ whip. Oh irony.

The balrog swung the whip in a horizontal swipe, just over Gandalf's head, the tip making a exploding crack and a shower of sparks against the cavern wall.

"You shall not pass!" Gandalf thundered — no metaphor intended — and slammed the end of his staff down on the bridge. A flash of light, and the protective sphere around him winked out, sinking into the stone bridge beneath their feet. A tag dramatic maybe, but one way or another I believed those words.

The balrog wasn't going to cross that bridge. Of that I was certain.

_ 'He'll be ok. He was there later on, I'm sure…'_

Tink didn't say anything. I couldn't even focus enough to feel if she was there.

The balrog gave another blast-furnace roar, and I felt the scorching heat hit my face from all the way across the chasm. My hands flew to protect my face, my eyes clenched shut, and the world spun like I'd stuck my head inside a washing machine on spin-cycle. The feeling was all too familiar…

"No, no, not _now_!" I heard my own voice cry as my stomach lurched. I already knew what was happening before there was another _snap_ from inside my head, and the world came into focus behind my still closed eyes.

I could feel my cheeks were wet. My chest ached with the remnants of agonised sobs.

A cut crystal vial was clutched in my trembling hands. I was shaking so badly I could barely unstopper it. More tears spilled down my cheeks. The sharp scent of magic touched my senses.

I hesitated, the glass a hair's breadth from my lips.

I didn't want to. Eru save me, I wanted so badly not to. But what I wanted didn't matter anymore.

"They'll be safe." I heard myself whisper almost silently. I couldn't tell if I was speaking to someone else, or only to myself. Another pained sob wracked my body, but I felt grim determination bubble up inside me as my hand clenched on the vial.

"You can have me, _rabê.*****_ But you'll _never_ have them."

I touched the vial to my lips, and drank.

A crash and a howl brought me back with a start.

I was slumped against the stone wall behind me, sweaty, trembling, and gasping for breath. I looked up just in time to see the balrog lunge over the causeway, straight towards Gandalf. Then half of the bridge cracked and crumbled under the balrog feet, and it fell straight down into the gloom of the chasm below with a screeching howl of fury. Gandalf dropped his sword arm to his side, his chest heaving with a heavy exhale of relief…

Then the flaming whip of the balrog flew up in one last slash, and caught around the wizard's ankle.

His foot was pulled out from under him, and he slipped over the edge, catching the broken side of the bridge with his weakened fingers. My breath caught in a tiny choked gasp.

"Gandalf!" Frodo yelled, trying to race back down the stairs to help him. Boromir caught him just in time and held him back, shouting something I couldn't hear clearly.

Gandalf pulled himself up just enough to see us all there.

His kind blue eyes met mine for a fraction of a second, and I was sure when he looked at me, he was really looking at us all.

"Fly you fools."

Then he was gone, following the balrog down into the dark.

Somewhere outside my own haze of shock, I heard Frodo scream.

**_~ / ~ / ~ / ~_**

I felt numb as we fled Moria.

I knew consciously that I hurt all over as we run and stumbled out and back into daylight, but I couldn't feel anything. It felt like years I'd been longing to see the sky again. But when the morning sunlight finally fell on all our faces, it did nothing but illuminate exactly what had just happened.

We'd lost Gandalf.

It didn't seem real. Like we were in some over dramatised scene in a play, and any second the short tempered but kindly old wizard was going to appear from the wings for an encore.

I collapsed onto boulder once we were outside and onto the foothills of the mountains, torn between gasping for fresh air and just throwing up everything I'd eaten in the past day. Sensation had finally start to come back through the shock. My throat was bone dry, my chest and side hurt like hell with a runner's stitch, but I couldn't make a sound. I didn't even realised I was already crying until the cool breeze turned the tears cold against the warm skin on my cheeks.

The others were no better. I could hear the heart wrenching sounds of the hobbit's sobbing, mostly Merry and Pippin. Sam, who was closest to me, had his face buried quietly in his hands, but his shoulders were trembling. Gimli was roaring with fury, trying to force his way back towards the tunnels, with only Boromir there to keep him from charging back to avenge our fallen guide. I couldn't see or hear Aragorn, Legolas or Frodo. I didn't even try and look for them — doing a headcount like I'd done whenever I was scared in the dark under the mountain…

I didn't want to count the heads of our company, only to count nine, when there should have been ten.

I just sat there, hunched over myself, crying silently for what felt like ages. I couldn't claim to mourn Gandalf like the hobbits did. In all respects, I barely knew the man. But he'd _gone_. The kindly old wizard, our guide, the only man who's supported my joining the Fellowship in the first place… the only one of our company who knew the truth about me. And he was suddenly just gone.

I didn't understand how that was _possible._ Every foggy memory I had of the trilogy told me that Gandalf had a larger role to play, beyond saving the Fellowship from Moria. He couldn't really be dead. He appeared later on in the story! I was sure of it! Or had I remembered it wrong all this time? Was he truly gone, and if I'd only remembered sooner I could have done something to stop it?

I was so tired and confused, I couldn't make myself think straight. My side was _still_ burning with a stitch from running so hard, and probably inhaling so much smoke. Cursing through my silent tears, I touched a hand to my ribs, and froze at what I felt there…

It wasn't a runner's stitch in my side.

I pulled aside the outer layer of my tunic, and looked down to see the end of a black crossbow bolt about the size and length of pencil jutting out of the right side of my torso. It hadn't gone deep enough to hit anything major — thank God — or come out the other side, but it was still lodge in deep just under my floating rib. The wound was oozing a steady trickle of dark red blood down my side.

I just stared at it in shock, the realisation slowly sinking in.

I'd been _shot._

"H-how…?" I breathed, looking vacantly down at it, "I barely even felt it…"

Then the actual shock finally hit me. My entire body went almost painfully cold, like I'd been suddenly dunked in ice water. My vision started going fuzzy around the edges and I had to fight to keep breathing steadily. It didn't hurt as much as you'd expect, I was still too jumped up on adrenaline for that. But the clammy feel of my skin and twisting feeling in my stomach was enough to reason that the wound was bad. Goblin arrows were often poisoned, I remembered reading that somewhere…

_'Pull it out.'_ Tink ordered me — don't miss the innuendo there, all yee faithful perverts.

_'No,'_ I answered silently feeling myself going pale, _'The head is probably barbed. If I try and take it out myself, I'll just bleed out.'_

_'And if you don't, the poison will spread to your heart.'_

_ 'Or it might not be poisoned at all!' _I insisted, though I knew I wasn't fooling anyone, least of all myself. _'I can't slow them down now. Gandalf said that Lothlorien is less than a day from Moria's east gate. If I can hang on that long we can get help there.'_

I looked over at the others, keeping my body turned away to hide my injury.

Gimli had given up his outraged struggling in favour or slumping over in exhausted defeat. Aragorn had told Legolas to help get the others moving again, and he was reluctantly trying to help a still weeping Merry back onto his feet.

Keeping my wounded side facing away from them all, I took the arrow shaft in my left hand, and placed my other against my side to hold it steady. It hurt. I took a few deep breaths, held the last, and snapped the shaft an inch from my side. Pain fired up through the entire left half of my torso, and I had to bite hard on my cheek to keep from crying out. I hunched over myself, breathing deeply until the pain receded, pretending that I was doubled over with shock rather than side-splitting agony.

"Give them a moment, for pity's sake!" Boromir's loud voice suddenly came out sorrowful and angry at the same time, but I heard Aragorn meet his outrage with cold reason. He hid it well, but I could hear the sadness in his own voice too. He was just a lot better at masking his grief over Gandalf's loss than the other man of Gondor.

"By dark these hills will be swarming with orcs!" He replied quietly, sheathing his sword which was now clean of orc blood. "We must reach the woods of Lothlorien by nightfall."

Footsteps came towards me. I uncurled myself and looked up to find Legolas standing before me. A confused and pained look was etched on his features. The expression looked alien on his normally calm and self-assured face. He looked like a lost puppy. I guess death wasn't something he'd ever had to deal with this close up before…

Silently, he offered out his hand to me, and I took it.

I stood up, my legs a little wobbly, and my side still throbbing dully under my tunic. While Boromir and Aragorn had argued, I'd pulled the sash from around my waist, and subtly used it to bind around the broken arrow shaft, keeping it still, but also keeping it hidden.

_ 'Don't be an idiot, boss!' _Tink's voice came quiet and faintly pleading in my head again._'This is insane, even for you!'_

Legolas led me to follow the others, his fingers only slipping from around mine when we'd fallen into step behind the still distraught hobbits. When no one was looking, I dug in my medical satchel and pulled out three small bottles from the bag. I gulped down the gritty substance that would help fight any poison already in my system, along with the last of my _miruvor_ and the pain relief draught, hoping that it would be enough.

I said nothing, not in my head and not aloud.

Tink was right. This was insane, even for me. But all I could think about was the look on Gandalf's face.

Right before he'd fallen into dark after the monster he'd saved us from.

* * *

><p><strong>Translations:<strong>

*** ** "bitch" (Adûnaic)

* * *

><p><strong>AN: So there we go! I hope you enjoyed the double whammy chapter update. It took a lot to get done, but oh it so was worth it — especially to end on a cliffhanger! XD**

**Just a little heads-up: I start work again after the 1st of April. I'll still be writing, but updates may be a little slower than I'd like (every 10 - 14 days?) We'll see though. I managed to get both these long chapters finished in just under two weeks. Anything's possible!**

**Let me know your thoughts if you can spare a review, and thanks to those of you who already left me with some lovely feedback! Thanks for reading! See you next chapter!**


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